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Client StoriesNOTE: The International Coach Federation (ICF) code of ethics dictates that I keep the identity of my clients confidential. Those who have given me permission to share their names have written testimonials that appear throughout the site. The client stories you'll find here are representative of the kinds of people I work with, the situations that brought them to coaching, and the highlighted outcomes of our work together.
Internet and Web Marketing Companies and Consultants Everyone but me is making money - this was the concern of the owner of a Web Development company who was working 50 hours or more a week and still not earning enough money. He hired me to help him figure out how to turn this around so that he was at least as profitable as the people he subcontracted to. One day it hit him. He was failing to charge the full value of his worth and he decided he'd had it. He returned to an earlier business model, toward specialty consulting and partnership assignments, and things started to turn around. A highly competent marketing consultant was suffering under the busyness and stress that came from working with difficult clients, and doing work that did not fully engage her talents and interests. Having gotten very clear about her value and competencies, she's now seeking opportunities and accepting assignments that excite her, pay her what she's worth and with companies that value and respect her work. It took a bit of time, but she's found her groove and is thriving. Yes, in 2009! Financial and Mortgage Services I'm working with a CPA that specializes in international tax to create a marketing plan that positions him as an expert consultant for companies that operate on a global level. He's just finished a 2 year assignment and wants not only to get back on track with his marketing, but to be seen as the expert consultant he is. Stay tuned to find out how he does that. I had the privilege to work with a fee-based financial planner who caters to a very narrow target niche needed help with his marketing. He was one smart cookie and had many pieces of the system in place, but was not producing reliable results. It was not long after we started working together that he faced the toughest stock market decline in years. We developed a 2-pronged marketing approach that fit his style, strengths and personality to a tee. By April of 2009 he'd already reached 75% of his new business goal for the entire year. Not only that, but for the first time since he started his business he took a well-deserved week long vacation with his wife and kids, and left his computer at home. (He'd taken vacations before, but never allowed himself to disconnect so completely.) I was hired by a highly successful mortgage broker during the recent glory years prior to the real estate collapse. She has an amazingly strong work ethic and customer service focus that was, nonetheless, getting in her way. Unfortunately, she believed that if she slowed down she'd suddenly become lazy, immediately loose clients and just stop working all together. She also had a full blown belief that if she didn't make herself available to her clients at all hours of the day by phone, cell phone, fax and email, they'd go elsewhere. To top it all off, she had high standards and was a perfectionist who didn't trust others to do as good a job as she did. We tackled one challenge at a time and within a few months of our working together she was able to cluster her business activities so that she stopped reacting to external circumstances (phones and deadlines) and became the decision maker in how she spent her time. As a result, she was able to set aside time to focus on marketing to a new industry, to take one afternoon a week to devote to taking care of her newborn grandson, and to periodically take guilt-free time off at least one day a week. She even learned how to off-load some of the work she really had no business doing to someone in the office, thus freeing up more of her time. She also stopped engaging in volunteer activities that were draining her energy and not adding to her bottom line. Business coaches and consultants A career coach came to me because she was in a constant internal tug-of-war between business growth opportunities and her commitment to her children. She has 2 young children and is quite - and rightfully - protective of her time with them. At the same time, when she watched what her colleagues were doing, how hard they were working, and their apparent success, she often felt she should be doing much more than she was or be left behind. Furthermore, she didn’t want to pursue clients, she preferred to respond to requests. I worked with her to embrace her true values and preferences so that she stopped feeling badly about herself. We then developed a working calendar (from The Master Calendar Solution) for her business that helped her decide how to get the most from the available 20 hours a week for her business. After just 3 months, gone was the guilt, gone was that competitive feeling. In their place was a sense of purpose, and a real opportunity to take advantage of and commit only to the people, activities and organizations that would float her boat and honor her personal preferences. A corporate leadership coach came to me because after several years in business with reasonable success - success many would be happy with - he realized his income was haphazard and results often dependent on others. He was well networked, well respected, and work came his way, but he feared that if he didn’t elevate his standards of engagement – and become more proactive about his marketing - that he would eventually stagnate. Like many introverts with strong social skills, people like him, trust him, and rely on him. Good when you’re starting out (perhaps). Less than good if you want more of a say in how your business grows. We started out by reviewing his purpose, his values and his unique philosophy. From there, we worked on identifying his preferred target client, level of engagement and revenue goals, not to simply make it but to grow and thrive. Before focusing on marketing and growth, he identified the projects and people that were less than satisfying and then gracefully took them off his stack of commitments. Keeping in mind his preferences, strengths and direction, we created a marketing strategy focused on his key target clients. To help him stay focused on his best work, he hired a marketing assistant to do the routine marketing activities that he knew were important, but would never get done if left to him. With all the elements in place, he began to secure new business and return engagements with just the kind of clients and opportunities he most preferred. Just 8 months in to 2010 he had reached 95% of his revenue goal for the entire year. With the systems working, and this result established, he was able to focus in again on his personal brand, what he calls “his business 3.0.” A scientist, a research laboratory manager at a prestigious university in New York, came to me because just a year away from tenure, her health issues were making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reliably stay effective at work. This had been going on for a few years and she felt that she was losing the battle. She wanted to figure out how and what to focus on that would be most critical in her role as lab manager, and to significantly reduce the stress associated with the politics of her position, as well as the peripheral demands that were not important, but nonetheless remained on her get-it-done list. We reviewed what was absolutely necessary to minimally perform her duties based not on the expectations of others, but on the outcomes that were most important to her and the students in her lab. Then we worked to create the structure through a weekly calendar template (from The Master Calendar Solution) that give her the best balance between her absolute need for rest and her wish to help the students in her lab with their work. Depending on her level of pain and varying medical appointments, she was either able to keep to her schedule, or not. Her most notable results were:
A talented, business savvy private college consultant for high school juniors and seniors had reached her capacity to meet the demand for her services. As with many of my clients, she's got very high standards, which contributes to her success. She, like the career coach, has a young child. She wants to serve the growing demands for her services, but not to the detriment of her daughter. She knows that in order to grow she needs to hire someone that can deliver her unique services at the same high level of skill and service she does. Yet, she hesitated. To start, we addressed her concerns about not only finding the right person, but trusting this person with her intellectual capital. We also reaffirmed her desire to serve more students, and the opportunity she'd created in her area. We looked at a couple of business models and she settled on identifying sub-contractors with similar background to hers, who could also develop their own client base. She hired her first sub-contractor and used the opportunity to outline a detailed training and ramp-up schedule. (We used worksheets from my Delegation Planning Kit to help her plan and interview.) Though the first person did not have all the qualities she was looking for, she now has a template for recruiting, interviewing and training others. Two years later she's moved out of her home office, hired a full time assistant and continues to grow. She still gets her time with her daughter. If you want results like these, let's set up a coaching consultation. 
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Coaching: WorkStyle Approach | Common Coaching Outcomes |
Who I Work With |
Client Stories Copyright © 2001-2010 by Lifework Business Partners. All rights reserved.
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Joan's greatest strengths are her deep
listening skills, plus her clear desire to help in whatever ways she could. I
was deeply impressed with her generating books and magazines of interest to me.
It was clear that she went to the book store with, not only her own needs,
but those of her clients on her mind.
