Everyday Bliss

Click to Read Part I here

Part II in a series dealing with the Modern Service Business on the Internet, pricing products, stuff you really DON’T know about our back ends (get your mind out of the gutter, it’s not what you think) and Scouting Badge Competency Filters

Crucial Knowledge About The Model & Product Range In Modern Service Industries

(stick with it – after the Crucially Cool & Deadly Accurate education bit, comes the cute & fuzzy punch line)

While the coach Amanda hired (see Part I of this article) may have mis-stated the tiered level of their services and products – and badly – there’s fundamentally nothing wrong with this approach as a business model.

This tiered pricing structure is a common model used in the coaching, therapy and internet marketing industries. As do thousands of authors, speakers and coaches, I use this model myself – offering a basic-but-still-valuable product for considerably less than the full-bore-workshop/teaching/coaching experience-with-lots-of-extras.

This helps people who can’t afford to hire us privately STILL benefit from the teachings we have to offer. I’ll continue to offer this model because it’s one way I stay in integrity with my personal goals by not excluding anyone, but also not giving away or cheapening the value of my own hard work.

Something to GET…and Get Over:

People DO NOT VALUE what is given for free. Check out any lottery winner ten years down the line and you’ll see what I mean. They’re right back to the state they were before they won (and squandered) all the money. If you want to truly value and USE a training or product, my sincere advice is to pay as dearly as you can for it.

When it hurts just a little bit to get something you want or need, you will value it ten times as much, use it over and over time and again, and grow exponentially from its benefits.

And in defense of the many who are in integrity about their teachings — most of us pack our lower priced trainings full of value and don’t misrepresent them. Those teachers are out there for you — when you’re ready, you’ll find the right one.

Education On How A Profitable Online Business Works

If you don’t run an online business, you wouldn’t necessarily know all the components that go into a pricing or product partitioning decision. If you have your own business, a lot of what I’m going to say now will be old hat. But remember that your clients and customers all too often don’t have such education. And because they don’t understand the back end of how a coaching or therapy business works, their perceptions can be a little skewed.

Here’s a little education on some of the basics if you’ve never seen the back-end of an online business. Pay attention, particularly if you feel prices asked are “unfair”. Here’s how the information marketing thing unpacks:

1) A full-price product or class or coaching group costs more because it’s more involved and much more work on my end and my team’s. We deserve to get paid well for our effort, this is the way online teachers, coaches and etc. make their money.

2) Only the person who creates the product knows the real value of it, and can set a fair price. If you don’t like the price someone set, move on and find someone teaching at your financial level or….uplevel your finances. There are coaches for that you can find by Googling “Financial” or “Abundance” coaching.

3) I can’t speak to anyone else’s business but my own so here’s my perspective as a business owner with a lot of calls on her time. My time is finite, so I choose to work in large groups where an hour of my time teaches anywhere from forty to hundreds of people. That way the message I have to get out to the world gets to the maximum amount of people, they pay far less than to hire me one-on-one privately, and I get paid well for the hours of research, composing, editing of the material, rehearsal if with others if present, and so on that take place before the class even begins.

4) Figure  for each one hour class you attend (even the freebies) perhaps 10 hours of thought and preparation went into that one hour. So you’re not just paying for an hour – you’re getting anywhere from eight to twelve actual hours of education condensed down into one for you….which is getting off cheap!

A coaching industry standard fee for a one-hour class in 2010 starts at $47. But if you figure 10 hours prep including the one hour of class, you’re paying a bit over FOUR DOLLARS AN HOUR. That’s totally CHEAP.

Therefore, don’t ask for anyone’s work for free.

4.5) I put plenty of free articles, teaching and coaching out there as do most coaches and teachers. If the person you want to learn from doesn’t, it would be good consumer feedback to let them know, and let them know you would be happy to test-drive any free products or trainings they put out for the payment of a great review. This will hopefully encourage your prospective teacher to consider putting out something in your price range. It won’t be the whole enchilada, more like a few good nibbles off the side. But it’ll still be delicious, filling and teach you something valuable.

And if you do get this….be happy. Send a glowing review (teachers really need these!). Work the program. Often it is helpful people like this that a vendor will decide to comp into their trainings. Couldn’t hurt to try, now could it?

5) Just as every teacher and coach out there, I can’t (and wouldn’t even if I could) give you the farm in a one hour class or free ebook, and have too much respect for myself and my hardworking team to give away our work for free other than the free telesminar and other events I already participate in.

Whatever price I put on my work is a fair representation of what went into it, is already made as affordable and as inexpensive as I can realistically make it. There are points of engagment at all possible levels.

6) The prevailing model that makes a coaching business profitable is teaching to hundreds at lower prices like $47 and $97, to a smaller group at the mid to high hundreds and to an even smaller, more intensely engaged-with group for several thousand, depending on the breadth and length of engagement.  It’s a good and fair model that allows win-win all around the board and allows a coach and their team to be fairly recompensed for their time and effort.

7) Which brings me to the point that there are TONS of expenses involved in creating a premium product that the buyer never sees or knows about, but that on our end, we need to recoup before we ever see a penny’s profit. That includes:

• paying monthly fees for shopping carts
• autoresponders so we can communicate with you
• merchant bank fees so we can sell our products easily
• packaging and fulfillment fees if a physical product
• help desk staff, assistants & editors
• website team who pulls it all together
• online research, marketing team and other unsung hero/ines of the journey

As an example in my case: multiple thousands in fees for a DVD project, for experts to shoot, cut, edit and so on. Plus untold hours writing, rehearsing and etc. on my part. The information is premium content that represents some of the best lessons I had to teach at the time. That DVD set like similar products others offer does not sell cheap. This is why. Paying rent or mortgage and buying food for our families is another reason why.

NOW HAVING SAID THAT….

And going back to Amanda’s example – Coaches/teachers/healers/etc. who misrepresent what you get in an entry-level product, constantly try to upsell you in a ham-handed manner are not cool.

Though….more than anything this indicates such a teacher’s immaturity, lack of learning or lack of enough time in the trenches. Your teacher acted irresponsibly, but remember that people also do this because they are:

(A) Scared

(B) Don’t know any better.

While you had a weird experience, it’s tremendously empowering to GIVE THANKS for the valuable lessons (you’ve learned more than you know), and to bless and release people like this. They *need* your blessings. And when you bless folks like this, it comes back to you, multiplied.

Plus, you’re aware of the integrity gap and how icky that feels.

Yay!

You now have a valuable tool to use in future situations like this. If you are or have ever been a Scout (GirlScout, BoyScout, Campfire Girl etc) – sew that badge to your vest, you now have a new and immeasurably valuable competency filter.

So really – you win in several different ways.

THE CURE: Having A Kitten In
Your Tummy Is Good For You

In any case, what about releasing judgment of the Unscrupulous Teacher… and also, of yourself? Judgment is never useful in such cases – we just use it to beat ourselves or others up with. What about thinking of making a “considered decision” and use that filter you gained to help you filter out the klutzes, the out-of-integrity & the just plain money-grubbing nasties? Done=Done

Now you know how good holding a baby, petting a puppy or kitten or getting a hug makes you feel…right? Feels good in the tummy, happy and warm, doesn’t it?

Look at the kitten…awwww…ain’t he cute? I had to take a break when I found this pic just to coo at it for several seconds. Happy and warm in the tummy. Mmmm…

Go for teachers who make you feel that way.

Who cheer for you, give you content with real meat on it, with rich juices dripping off in each encounter you have with them, who uphold your best interest in all ways, especially if you don’t even know what that is yet.

Teachers who tell you hard truths when necessary but always with love and more respect than you probably give yourself.

And who do this whether they are sharing a small piece of their particular pie with you, or the whole enchilada.

That’s a teacher, coach or therapist I’d want to hire and tell ALL of my friends about. That’s a precious resource to share with the world.

This is the reasonI try to bring great teachers I know and respect more exposure to a wider audience whenever I can. The more you SHARE resources like this, the greater will be your own benefit, and the benefit to all you expose these new teachers to.

On this flip side of all that this is – (and will you release that and all that these thoughts bring up NOW please….? Thank You)  there is the question:

Who do you feel about like a warm happy kitten in your tummy?

Who just “does it” for you? Who

- upholds you

- respects you

- loves you

- champions you

- GROWS you

just by being in your life?

If you’ve got that my friend, you’re blessed.

I’ve been so blessed many times in this life.

Am so thankful for many blessings.

The more thanks you give the more you have to give.

I intend the same for you.

Bright Blessings of Summer….

…Being a tutorial on How To Know You’re Being Scammed, How To Avoid Being Scammed & How To Make Lemonade In a Poor Learning Environment

PART I:

Amanda sounded-off on the previous post saying:

“I have heard several free teleseminars, and signed up for the $97 package….her offering was misrepresented (she apologized for that, but claimed no responsibility)…and essentially tells those of us who signed up that because we received such a large discount, we’re not getting the same benefits that her private clients get, AND if you really want the results that she promises, you need to sign up for the next level, at considerably higher cost.

I have learned many valuable tools but…I guess I’m feeling the “once bitten, twice shy” thing. I think the work is very valuable, …it just seems that some folks are working out of integrity, and then I’m left with the self-judgment of having made yet another “interesting” choice…”

First of all, THANK YOU Amanda for bringing up a number of issues here, that I think are  worth a more extended response, some talk about what fair and unfair is, and some general education that coaches, speakers, teachers and others who conduct information-based businesses really wish the general public knew.

I hope the following is helpful not just to Amanda, but everyone who has ever felt gypped, cheated, taken advantage of or used by someone selling a service. And on our side of the fence, every coach, therapist or other kind of teacher who has put their heart and soul into a product only to be told they stink, their product or training stinks and it’s not worth either the buyer’s time or what was paid for it.

The below is meant with respect, to educate.

And sometimes that takes hard truths.

Plus, there’s a lot that goes into running a coaching,
therapy or speaking business that you don’t know about, that bears on the decisions and behavior you’re seeing.

Put your dander in park.

Enjoy the ride.

The Map Is Not The Territory…

This NLP presupposition is particularly apropos when talking about He Said/She Said and other Point Of View type of situations.

The consumer has their point of view “I’ve been screwed” but the vendor has their own point of view too, which ranges from “I truly care about my customers and clients, I’ve done my best to explain the product and will deal fairly with them in whatever they need. ” to the less prosiac: “Screw the customer.”

Crappy trainings, constant annoying/unskillful upsell and dismissive teachers infatuated with their own mystique and the observations Amanda made about her experience  are the “elephant in the middle of the room” in the world of coaches and other service professionals. There are both unscrupulous people involved in selling their wares, as well as people who think they know what they’re talking about …. and simply don’t. And who just don’t get it. And who pass that not getting it on to an unsuspecting public.

Unfortunately, Amanda seems to have gotten one of these. I’m sorry Amanda, that you had that kind of experience. But having had that experience, you’ve actually come out more a winner than you know.

More about that below. But first to address everyone:

On the flip side of the disgruntled buyer situation, there’s the customer having unrealistic expectations of the class or product, or not knowing what they’re signing up for because they didn’t do the homework, or didn’t read the sales page entirely, check the guarantee or ask hard questions of the trainers before buying.

Each side of this equation has valid points, but there is a commonality: Education and communication. These are the key factors in why a training is perceived as “bad” after the fact or a customer feels scammed. This resolves into three categories:

1.  Either the teacher didn’t tell the prospective students what to expect

2. The teacher is lying (call it “creative accounting” if you will – amounts to the same thing)

3. The student expected much more than was ever on the table, and didn’t check those expectations out before they bought-in.

Let’s examine all sides of this equation. I’ll also give you some real Coaching Tips and a Cure for this problem you can implement immediately…

I’ll come out front and say I’ve been in situations, trainers/coaches/healers/etc. like this before myself. Several times early in my coaching training I took marketing trainings that ranged from decent to sucky. The suckier ones of these were inevitably given by someone who barely knew what they were talking about themself, or a self-styled “guru” who was too full of themself to care about their students once the money was in the bank.

While I’ve for the most part stopped taking such trainings, I do like to have a refresher every now and then. So earlier this year I participated in a training that had me rolling my eyes at the lack of integrity.

Like the training Amanda referenced, (though costing in the several-thousands) this program was very content-light and aimed at beginners when advertised (and sold to me) as advanced, the “guru” was rarely there when advertised as the main teacher, and she left the teaching to incompetent subordinates who simply read from the pdfs. Ugh. The training was definitely set up to be a clearing house for the even-more-expensive program the person was offering and heavily promoted throughout. And…the guru and her teachers seemed surprised that more of us didn’t want to buy into the next training. That always has astounded me, that you would give a shitty training, not look at your feedback forms to KNOW that it was shitty, then be surprised people aren’t begging for more.

I asked the hard questions before buying as well, and can’t call it anything but what it was. Her organization blatantly lied to me and to others I spoke with about the nature and scope of the training. NOT Attractive!

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Gurus, this is for you:

WHY on earth would you lie to a prospective customer who is clearly not in your demographic, or on the flip side, who doesn’t have the funds to pay your fees – even the least expensive ones?

Are you THAT BROKE with all your cars, expensive art, the  house in the country and the other one in the City and your elite Diamond and Platinum clients (that you constantly tout)  that you need to deceive people?

Because that’s how this kind of behavior comes off. And it ain’t cool. Not even close.

It’s downright chilly.

And as  karma is a very real force, I’m issuing a challenge to you to STEP UP, tell the Truth, even if it means losing customers. You’ll make a good friend and earn good-karma points by sending them to the people you know who DO offer what they need.

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…So sometimes Amanda, and others reading this -  even if you do all your homework you can still get a sucky experience. It was up to me to turn my experience around, mine the few valuable resources it contained and go on. I’d suggest you do this with any training you come up against that’s like this.

Oh and also don’t wait for things to get better as I did. I wanted to ask for my money back after the first week, when I found the “guru” wasn’t to be present in our actual class meetings. But I thought “wait and see”. I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So I let it go too long and the “ask for a refund by this date” blew past me. If you get that icky feeling in the pit of your stomach – pull out and ask for a refund immediately. Learn from my mistake please.

So yes, I get it.

Speaking as a business owner….taking responsibility for everything in my business, A-Z is the ONLY thing I can do and remain in integrity. I can pass some jobs off to other people who do them better than me (and do!) but the buck stops with me, the business owner. You too, I bet.

I’ve fluffed it with my students before and done my best to make it up to them. Sometimes due to family issues or pressures of writing a book or producing an intensely-engaging product, I’ve let commitments to my students slide. And mostly, they’ve understood, gone “Uh, hello – we’re here and we need help” and that’s all it took for me to get back to them. If you’re at this place in a training, schedule a one-on-one with the teacher and let them know they’re letting you down.

BUT CAVEAT EMPTOR: BUYER BEWARE.  BE SURE FIRST – that you have a reasonable expectation of a seller’s behavior and what you should be getting (what was promised) out of the product or program. If you were promised a private session with the guru and it hasn’t come to pass, call them on it. If you EXPECT an hour (or more) of coaching and only half an hour was promised – don’t go there. Be reasonable.

“When In Frustration” Coaching Tip:

On the flipside…when you’re dealing with little to no content, upsell-upsell-upsell and blah answers to your serious questions…it’s not very attractive, is it? Pisses you off. But, despite all that, those of us who have gone through this kind of experience have a really good filter set to tell those without integrity from those  we’d like better.

Take that filtering you gained, as a GOOD OUTCOME of this experience, along with the valuable tools you did learn.

Remember where in your body you FELT IT when you realized you’d been had. Then if you go for another opportunity like this, check in with that part of the body not once but several times before you make your final decision. This kind of thing happens no matter what the price of the intro product is. It’s the quality of the teacher involved, not the price point. Vote with your feet in such cases.

Amanda shares:“She tells us because we received such a large discount, we’re not getting the same benefits that her private clients get…”

Well that’s just dandy, isn’t it? It almost sounds like a “neener, neener, you can’t have any” when I’ll bet what she meant to do was entice you into buying up to the private client level. So your coach really doesn’t know how to communicate correctly. Not only did she misrepresent the benefits, but had crappy delivery. You’re miffed and I understand that.  You bought the product and by gosh, you wanted those results promised on the sales page! Fair enough.

I don’t know how the product was offered, if you were offered a choice of three tiers on the page and chose the least expensive, or just how it went down. But Communication is the issue here. Often a tiered stack is how such offers will be presented. Here’s how most of us do this, either in a sales page or through a sales conversation with someone:

“Inexpensive Package A gets these benefits ( typically followed by a bullet point list). Medium-range Package B gets all the benefits of Package A PLUS the following bullet-point list of extras. Expensive Package C gets all the benefits in A and B and ALSO these following bullet pointed benefits.”

That way, there are no mistakes, and your buyer knows exactly what they’re getting.

The Responsible Position, or, what your coach didn’t do:
As a business owner, if I realized I screwed up and people were disgruntled, I’d give them their money back and say so long if that’s what they wanted. I’ve done this when weirdness has happened and it’s always the best policy. No harm, no foul. Particularly if misrepresentation is on the table, you’ve every right to ask for your money back.

Also as the business owner, I’d want if possible, to repair relations with the disgruntled person, and if not, to have their angry energy out of my environment as soon as possible.

If you’re a coach, teacher or other service provider in such as situation – give back the money. Trust me, you NEVER need money like this. It’s poison that will contaminate the energy of your business.

Give it up.

However….let’s look at the other side of this equation – Outcome Expectancy.

On this side of the fence, the consumer can equally be responsible for what happens in a buying transaction. Lets  float an analogy of vendors at the county fair. After hearing a vendor extol the virtues of his apple PIE, a customer passes the pie counter, picks up and pays for a single APPLE….but  in his own mind for whatever reason, EXPECTS to get the entire PIE.

The vendor, happy with making an apple sale, adds value by caramel coating the apple, and  kicks in a coupon for a dollar off a whole pie. The vendor sees this as an “I’m being nice” upgrade.

The customer, due to their Outcome Expectancy of wanting the whole $20 pie for the 50¢ apple price, sees this as a scam and tells all their friends “The Apple Pie guy took my money and didn’t give me what I paid for!”

The sign in front of the apples says “Apples, 50¢”.  The vendor took 50¢ from the customer. That’s pretty transparent. So why does the anger happen on the customer’s part? He made assumptions way beyond the scope of the product’s stated worth or intrinsic value.

Ok, so this is a silly analogy, but you get the point and can extrapolate out to things you might have bought and been dissatisfied with.

Let’s just say this is the case with a product like a $97 taster sample of what that coach had to offer. It was fully explained on the sales page, the upscale training was also explained in a series of bullet points as outlined above.

Any training inexpensive as $97 is BOTH a complete training in – whatever facet of the major topic it is designed to address – PLUS a “taster” of the coach’s services should you wish to engage them at a deeper level. But it’s NO WAY meant to be a full training in the entire scope of the topic, A-Z.  That’s what the higher level trainings are for. You jump in, get your feet wet and if you like what you’ve learned, you level-up and get more info. This is the “college approach” where you take English 101 before English 201, 301, 401 & 501. Same idea. Such trainings are incremental and build on each other.

This common laddering of skills learning should not be seen as “scamming” by the public unless the trainer really poorly communicates this concept.

Let’s say the coach is on the up & up with this, and has fairly represented themself from the beginning.

But the buyer wants more and ASSUMES that ALL their needs will be fulfilled by the cheaper option. Well you know that old saying about assuming so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say before you buy, do a REALITY CHECK.

Coaching Questions To Ask Yourself:

1) Why am I buying this product?
2) What do I hope to get out of it?
3) Does what I want to get and my eventual goal match up to the description of the training or product?

if not…then consider another purchase.  If you STILL feel you should be getting a huge pretty package of more stuff than advertised for that price then…

Some tough love:

When you pay $97 for a cut-price hotel room do you complain to the manager because you weren’t given the honeymoon suite?  No, of course not. If you’d got the honeymoon suite for $97 you’d wonder what the heck was wrong with the room.

(I’d probably be checking the closet for Mother at this point)

The honeymoon suite, just like any premium level product, contains much more care lavished on it at greater expense – personal attention from an assigned wait-person, much bigger space and more amenities, an in-room spa, nicer bed, assorted extra food and toiletry items and so on. You’d expect to pay more for a premium product like that and be suspicious if the honeymoon suite were offered to you for peanuts. (as well you should be)

Ditto a premium priced coaching program where the coach spends more time on her clients, gives them extra insider secrets, or a private phone line to contact her with, or advanced training or free live events etc. that those who pay for lesser products don’t get.

You get what you pay for, and shouldn’t expect the Premium Product for a relatively cheap investment. And yes, the $47 or $97 class is a relatively cheap investment.

I’m not talking to anyone in particular here, but IF this speaks to your sentiments….why would you be miffed at not getting what a coach’s premium clients get for the substantially cheaper fee you paid for a reduced-service product?

Would you expect your doctor or dentist to give you such a steep discount? No. Don’t expect it of any business coach, therapist or other service provider. It disrespects the provider and yourself too.

Does that cheese you off?  Get Over It.  This is How authors, coaches, speakers, healers, therapists and everyone else, online or off, make a living.

If you’re a subscriber of mine & think we should be giving the product of our hard work, hearts and souls away for cheap or free – please unsubscribe from my list right this minute. You’ll be doing us both a favor.

And..this is why like many coaches, I do joint ventures with organizations like Maestro Conference and people like Linda Pannell, Lisa Garr, Debra Thompson,  Adela Rubio, Ellen Britt, Michelle Skaletski Boyd and Tom Buford to name a few. Folks who offer free teachings to anyone who can pick up a phone or listen on computer.

So that there is an option for folks who are cash-strapped.

So that there is a range of offers for all ends of the spectrum. And I pack that option as full of value for the short time we’re together as I pack my longer paid programs.

I Do Not however, serve the gratitude-free.

Neither should you.

TWO Coaching Tips:
Before purchase, ASK EVERY QUESTION YOU NEED TO about a product, the guarantee for that product, what exact parts the product contains and so on.

If you expected marketing training out of a basic EFT course and didn’t check it out, that would be one example of an incorrect assumption & expectation plus failure to verify parameters of the deal. DO. NOT. ASSUME.

So if you didn’t ask, your bad. If the vendor didn’t take every opportunity to clarify the parameters to you – their bad.

I personally have been on both sides of this, so yes I can speak to both the customer and the vendor bit. We’re all learning, making mistakes (there is no failure, only feedback – remember?) and growing. 

2nd Tip - WANT for others what you want for yourself. In the note above I asked you to unsubscribe if you wanted me to give you things that are immensely valuable for cheap or free. That means you don’t want me to make a living which besides being disrespectful also prevents YOU from making a living.

Check your feelings and your life – if you have this feeling of deep entitlement like the world (or me, or anyone else) “owes” you, how are your finances? Probably not great.

Truly abundant people want to share the wealth. It’s a lesson to take if you want to improve your life – want for others what you want for yourself.

Tune in again tomorrow for PART II: Crucial Knowledge, Scouting Badges & Why Having a Kitten in your Tummy Is Good For You

I’m tired of being constantly, relentlessly marketed to on social media sites by so-called “friends”. I had a what we describe in our house as a “little kitty fit” about cheesy marketing when I realized my entire Facebook feed for the last day was over 90% ads, marketing, thinly-veiled affiliate links and so on. DO. NOT. WANT.

If you’re that kind of friend, please do us both a favor and Un-Friend Me. Now. Thank you.

You can read it on Facebook, but let’s call a Memorial Day Moratorium on Cheesy Marketing – 90% or more market-y updates with little content, few merits and less than honest intentions.

Check it out here: http://bit.ly/9j9DAj

*** Update to the update 4/22: I’m going all the way home, to San Francisco on Saturday, 4/24, British Airways came thru with a last minute cancellation, called and booked me in. Wahoo! Leaving the rest as it was below though for posterity and export, to quote Bill Burroughs.   ***

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Here it is folks, selected highlights of being stuck as a traveller behind “The Grey Curtain”:

If you’ve been following the Paris Adventure Online, following me on Twitter or reading my updates on Facebook (pretty much the main places I’m posting while travelling) you know that like thousands of others, I’ve been stranded in Europe by the volcanic ash cloud.

And wait for it…this just in on April 21st: Heathrow now back open. Thank the Lord! Whose name apparently, is Adonis. Nope, I’m not kidding. Lord Adonis is the British Secretary of Transport in charge of such things.

The image at right was taken from BBC News on April 21 at 12:30pm Paris time. These travellers have been dossing down in the airport for almost a week, finally got boarding cards today, and are celebrating with champagne. I’m for a hot tub, massage and liberal application of chocolate, myself.

And then there were the inevitable gallows humor jokes that sprang up on Twitter and Facebook. One of the best I heard was “No, no Iceland…we said send us all your CASH. Regards, Europe”.  Here’s a random selection  of others from Britain’s Channel 4 News:

@hjortur: Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it’s hard to be accurate when firing a volcano .

@andylockran: ”Iceland goes bankrupt, then manages to set their island on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it”.

@pdacosta: “The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe”.

@islandpastor: “Waiter, there’s volcanic ash in my soup”… Waiter: “I know, it’s a no-fly zone”

The Personal-Ash End Of Things

Like many others, I’ve been rebooked – five times at this point. Like others, had cases packed & was literally in taxi ready to go when I fortunately got emergency call from British Airways not to come to airport.  This was the only time btw (and the third time I was rebooked) that BA notifications worked.

BA was helpful as possible but would absolutely not book me on a flight to San Francisco. I was offered any place else in Europe, when the cloud lifted, but no place in North America.

Like many others, I was reduced to begging. They’d heard it all before and while sympathetic, were not going to offer me a refund so I could book another airline that *was* flying.

“I’ll take anything to the American continent – Canada, Mexico, Peru – you go to Peru, I can see a British Airways flight to Lima from Madrid – how about that? I can get to Madrid on the train….bus…donkey cart. Anything!”

Finally, after I squeaked my wheel loud and hard enough, and made an absolute pest of myself by calling every fifteen minutes: “Ms Webster, I see this is the ninth time you’ve contacted us today, let’s see what we can do to get you home” – that’s the ticket folks! I was offered a flight out this Saturday the 24th to Phoenix, AZ. I took it and resumed praying the thing would go through.

We’re hearing that Katla, the second dormant Icelandic volcano and a bigger, nastier one (?!) is rumbling. My comment on the Facebook Ashcloud page was: “Now everybody, all together now: ‘Lullabye, and goodnight, and with roses bedight…’ Everyone keep singing ’til we all get home!”

Vagabond Coaches League & Rescue Tug

Molly (@shaboom) Gordon tweeted me that Michael Bungay (@boxofcrayons) Stanier was similarly stuck in Amsterdam. I joked with him over Twitter that we should call ourselves the “Vagabond Coaches League”, rent a tugboat and chug around European ports of call picking up stranded coaches and ferry the lot of us back home.

It would be just like Thomas Leonard’s Y2K RV trip across America to promote coaching.  We could party the night away, film the whole thing and sell book, DVDs and t-shirts as a product. It’d be a gas, gas, gas! (but no ash). Here’s our official t-shirt. Feel free to put this on your site if you’re a coach and were stranded by the ash. 

Although as to coaching, there were several opportunities for that. Group of British women tourists openly weeping in a cafe at hearing their flight was (yet-again) cancelled. When they said I could help I taught them EFT as in such situations people like to do anything to be proactive and EFT is one of the most active of the energy therapies.

We tapped and when that took the edge off, I taught them ETHOS to take them all the way into consciousness around the fact that they were safe, well fed and had a place to stay until they could get home. This is something I too am giving thanks for. They loved ETHOS and one said felt like stepping into her massage therapist’s office – it calmed her immediately. I left them with these two tools, the internet sites for more info and went off to see a museum I hadn’t gotten to see yet.

I’m good – I have a place to stay until Friday and then will do a hotel room for one night. Hopefully the shuttle I’d booked will take me to the airport rea-a-a-ally early as the flight is at gawdawful o’clock in the morning…

Short-Term Panic, Emotional Immunity & Other Biscuitry

While people were frantic to get back to their homes, we heard of fighting on trains and busses, bloodied noses on the Eurostar and a riot in Madrid. It was a relief to receive an email from ETHOS In Paris workshop participants, Anne & Jerome, saying they’d made it back to the UK with their children safely. On the whole however, I believe it’s been a time of great cameraderie, gallows humor and all.

Several older Brits I heard in cafes hearked back to the days of rationing during and after World War II.

“Ay-up lass,” one said to me philosophically “we’re all in it together. There’s nowt any one of us can do ’til that buggerin’ ash-hole’s done spewin’ its filth. Best sit tight and have another cuppa.” Rational wisdom from the mouth of a wizened Yorkshireman* old enough to be my grandpa, yet spry as a spring chicken and loaded down with Parisian goodies for his “young’uns”.

When the times get tough, the tough apparently go shopping.

But on the other paw, like many in private moments, I was caught in the grip of short-term panic and negative emotions. “Oh no, what if I never get home! What if that damned mountain spews for a year like it did in the 1800’s!”. Cue tears, railing at the universe in general and feeling sorry for myself in specific.

The worst was the feeling of stark loneliness when I was on the phone for hours with British Airways in the re-re-re-re-re-booking of my flights time after time. The toll that the stress of “not knowing” took was tremendous and had me falling into bed early, too exhausted to go out.

I wailed on the phone to my ever-patient husband who was doing his best to cope and was upset in his own right. I cried on the shoulders of friends while simultaneously trying not to. I was evil to a neighbor who snorted “Merde, l’Americaine!” for the tenth time to my face. He subsided in shock and hasn’t squeaked a word to me since. In short, I had a “little kitty fit” as we call it, when one of the cats throws a tantrum.

Once it was over, I set about employing the energy tools I had in my arsenal to shore up my Emotional Immunity. This is something I’ll be writing about more in the future, but the basis is the AM Energizers & PM Harmonizer exercises from my Everyday Bliss For Busy Women book.

How’s YOUR Emotional Immunity?

You can greatly increase it by simply tapping a round of EFT – with or without any intention or setup phrase behind it, and then doing an ETHOS set, ending up by stepping aside into Unlimited Self. When I do that, problems disappear like magic and the way is opened for me to do more productive things.

More productive like packing (done=done) and looking forward to my flight. In addition to getting home, it’s one of the best sleeps I’ve had on an airplane. British Airways is one of the few to offer full lie-down seats in Business class. Most seats that say they lie down flat only recline to within 30 degrees of flat so you’re at a kind of odd angle. I can actually stretch out in the BA sleeping pod and snooze almost as good as in bed at home. There’s a tv with on-demand movies, a plug for your laptop and peripherals and lockable storage drawer for same. You get a real sense of privacy and they provide earplugs and an eyeshade so the world goes away.

Somebody on Twitter asked about the food. They actually use china and silver service, with all the booze those who imbibe can hold. The kitchen is open through the journey with all the snacks and drinks you like and the flight attendants were some of the sweetest, even though they were in the middle of an industrial action when I flew. My halibut on the journey out was done to a turn and the veggies were crisp and good. How on earth do they do that aboard a plane?

I’m giving great thanks for all the many blessings this experience has been. Extra time with good friends, the ability to see myself rise to the occasion and surpass what I thought were my limits, increased love and expansiveness and…other things.

Will I make it back home this Saturday? Time will tell. And I’ll keep you updated.

Tune in next week for Maryam’s continuing adventures in: “Ash The World Turns”….

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Picture credit:  The Yorkshire Man by Mick Cawston: http://www.corsini.co.uk/fineart/yorkshire-terrier-prints.shtml

In Which Broke-But-Brilliant Conscious Entrepreneurs Win Really, Really Big.

I decided that The EFT Marketing School is the last time I’m ever going to teach marketing for service professionals. I’ve been successful teaching this kind of program and I really love the conscious entrepreneurs I’ve met (they’re up to such exciting things!), but ultimately…it’s not the reason I’m here, and not the work I’m meant to do.

But I know there are many of you who read these pages and are subscribed to my newsletter who are still in great, great need of connecting the dots between you and your Ideal Clients, sweet profits and the work YOU were meant to do.

Maybe you didn’t get in on any of my trainings because you’ve just been waiting for the “right time” to invest in the right training to generate clients, make friends and have a ton of fun, ethically and naturally.

Well let me tell you, that time is now. Because the people you were uniquely meant to serve, who can only hear that unique message from YOU are out there. And they’re suffering without your wisdom and experience to guide them.

After comparing many, many service business marketing programs similar to my own, the perfect teacher for me to refer you to for great teaching, and tapping for elimination of your “marketing ick” is good friend and EFT Master – Pamela Bruner! Learn more about her amazing offer here:

http://bit.ly/9qwtod

We just had a lovely call with Pamela on 6-Figure Success Formula. If you help others for a living and aren’t making the money you need to and are stressing out about it, you’ll want to sign up for the call even though it’s over as you’ll get a replay of our fantastic tutorial/interview.

I was just a tad on the sleepy side when we left the call and had some other happy things to say which you might possibly be interested to hear — especially if you’re into Conscious Business, Sustainability in income as well as elsewhere, and feelin’ blissful. Check it out here and get a replay:

http://bit.ly/9qwtod

Pamela shared with the Transformational Entrepreneur/business owners in my community how to market ethically, joyfully and effectively, without being perceived as a Charlie Cheeze-Weasel. And while making fat stacks of cash by simply offering who you are naturally, to the specific people you were put on earth to help.

so just to recap, we stop “pushing string” and “rowing upstream” in our marketing.

can you say “whew”? i knew you could.

Pamela’s background, #EFT Mastery that helps you get clear of your marketing blockages is enough to pay hundreds for, but all that she’s teaching in terms of naturally training you to market your business with ease, grace and joy, represents a very rich package. What she’s offering is worth thousands of dollars, which I approve of as that’s a value I have in crafting trainings myself. But then Pamela revealed an amazing price -only $97 a month.

(a month? very cool.)

Dunno how she does it, but if you help others for a living yet aren’t making diddley, you gotta get in there quick. If you have to forgo dinner out twice a month for a few to take this training, let me tell you, it’s worth it. You’re going to get past those key “ew, ick!” marketing challenges and bring more in the door than you spent on the training by a darnsight.

You’ll also learn how to reach those whose suffering your unique “package” of life, trainings and experiences can really help, and make a great living – naturally.

http://bit.ly/9qwtod

Run, don’t walk. For the first THREE in the door from those on this call or listening to it, Pamela’s offering a free coaching session. Really, really kind of her, and high-value for you. Enjoy!

Come claim your FREE “The EFT Way To Market Your Services: More Clients, Money & Fun in 2010″ intro class at http://eftmarketingschool.com You’ll learn more in this FREE CLASS than you will in any other, AND GET COACHED ON YOUR BUSINESS. More genuine “take-action takeaways” than you’ll experience any other place.

Why You Need To Take This Class Now

Gary Craig, the founder of Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT, is retiring after many years, and taking his massive, resource-crammed website down. Latest reports say he has put off his retirement from January 15th to March 1st due to the overwhelming amount of requests for a little more time to copy website materials and shut down the business. I for one have benefitted tremendously from Gary’s work and want to tender a personal “thank you and well done – rest well deserved”. Without EFT, there would be no Energy Coach Institute and I would not have been able to create the profession of Energy Coaching!

In this week’s tribute to Gary’s work, my colleague Pat Carrington brought up that people were upset over the fact that Gary’s fantastic marketing skills that would no longer be available to the community. “Who will teach us how to market our businesses when Gary is gone?” she cites one client as saying.

Just as I took up the challenge to help Gary market EFT along with several other top tappers and EFT Masters five years ago, I’m taking up the challenge today to offer this kind of training to you, the EFT Practitioner.

Gary and I both trained in the same neurolinguistic programming business marketing methods, and I have additional experience as a professional industrial psychologist researching what makes products & services sell, plus training in Guerrilla Marketing, in how to Get Clients Now and Book Yourself Solid. These are only three of the over thirty service business marketing programs I’ve taken in the last ten years.

I’ve spent probably fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars to learn these secrets and now, I am going to share them with you in a unique program created especially for EFT Practitioners, Coaches & Therapists – a unique blend of time-tested techniques you simply CAN’T learn elsewhere.

If you’re ready to stop practicing at it and get really good at your business – good enough to take lots of time off, be there when you want to for your family, take liberal vacations, buy whatever you need without worry and all the other things you may have been putting off, go over to:

http://eftmarketingschool.com

and GRAB YOUR SEAT FAST. We have two FREE classes that begin next week, so hop to it!

The New Year is here. 2010 – woohoo! We’re all sure it’s going to be a MUCH better year financially and every other way. But what if your business “isn’t there yet”? What if you’ve never made a dime of take-home profit? Are you at the point of giving up? Of retooling? Of running screaming back to corporate life?

If so, come take a FREE CLASS SERIES with me as I share the same marketing ideas Gary Craig, creator of Emotional Freedom Techniques, asked me to share as I helped him with his marketing of EFT. All that is right here PLUS you get a bonus free eBook from Joe “Mr Fire” Vitale on spiritually marketing your business!

http://eftmarketingschool.com

I’ve been enjoying the posts of several people around the issue of transparency. One of them, a young lawyer-turned-coach, Elizabeth Potts Weinstein had an interesting opinion on the “six/seven figure coach” – most of them aren’t making what you think because they’re plowing all the money they make back into their businesses. In the interest of full disclosure, I, like Elizabeth have put most of the money made back into my business from the start. I feel fortunate to have had the resources to do that and still live a rather nice lifestyle. We can all take a valuable lesson from this: Revenue Does Not Equal Profits.

If you still need profits and revenue however, you’ll want to join me for this free class series. Even if you’re in another part of the world and the time doesn’t work, sign up anyway – you’re going to get a free replay, even if you come across this blog post a year or two down the line. Again, the free class is here:

http://eftmarketingschool.com

I just found ALL of Napoleon Hill’s classic 1960 era made-for-tv 13 part episodes explaining his Mastermind princples. If you’re a coach, therapist or business maven, you’ll already know the power of the mastermind. This is NapHill at his finest, and well worth viewing. Classic & timeless, the lessons are the real power behind “The Secret”. All 13 will play for you right here in this window. Click play and enjoy!

http://task.fm is the hottest new outsourcing “Get ‘er done” tool among the coaching set. It’s free, you can record your tasks in slang, just the way you speak and the app will translate perfectly.

For instance, “Pick up dry cleaning a week from today after lunch” gets translated into “Pick up dry cleaning” with the date being exactly a week from the time you ordered the task, at 1pm.You can choose email, SMS or call-to for task reminder.

Cool? You bet. And for a cheapo $4 a month upgrade, you can log tasks by calling them into the service’s own 800 number and other refinements.

Best of all, you can synch up with Twitter, DM Task.fm and never have to log in. For the socmedia maven, a blessing. Here’s the lowdown from the FAQ:

• natural language input

  don’t enter dates and times manually. Save time by speaking in plain english

• twitter integration

  works with Twitter. Create reminders by sending us a Direct Message.

• sms, email and voice

  recieve reminders via sms, email, twitter or voice call. Change reminder types with a click

• add reminders via email

  create reminders directly from any email client. Never leave your inbox

• groups and contacts

  sending reminders to others is as simple as CC’ing a contact

• to-do lists

  task.fm includes a built in to-do manager. create unlimited lists

• tag and search

  add tags to any reminders to search and group. Supports hashtags via twitter and email

• voice transcription

  create reminders using your voice. Use a toll-free number

Hey Andrea, kudos on the Multiple Streams Advanced Strategies program!  I don’t know if I consider myself in the running for the Multiple Streams Advanced Strategies Contest, but I have so been learning from you for a long time, from the CoachVille days, through the first Mulitple Streams club & buy-a-book-get-a-conference-free in San Mateo, CA and the PinkSpoon teachings. You really showed us how to ethically increase our revenues with integrity, and greatly informed my marketing capabilities. A few of my points of leverage, from this material:

Pink Spoons:

http://maryamwebster.com/blisskit/

http://ethosmethod.com/quickstart/

http://everydaybliss.org

http://certifiedenergycoach.org/free-preview/

Low End of the Marketing Funnel:
(Here are lifechanging audios, ebooks & learning programs)

http://www.maryamwebster.com/shop/#audio

Median Portion of the Funnel
(Pre-recorded classes that were particularly stellar & group coaching):

http://ethosmethod.com/lyla/

http://12keys2bliss.com (in revision)

High End of the Funnel:
(Full Coaching Programs & Private Coaching and corporate services)

http://certifiedenergycoach.org

http://maryamwebster.com/services/

http://www.maryamwebster.com/mwg_about/

All in all, following the Multiple Streams model quadrupled my IP and at least tripled my income over single session-only coaching. Kudos!