I am a hacker.  (“Hacker” in the sense of programmers who really love to create things in code, NOT people trying to break into the CIA)   It is said in hacker circles (specifically in several essays by Paul Graham) that the best software is that which hackers write to scratch their own itch.   Why is that?  Because they are their own users.  It is the rare and magical combination in software development of (1) knowing exactly what is needed and (2) being able to create it.  If anything is cumbersome or annoying, they can fix it.  If a little shortcut is an obvious time saver, they can put it in.

One of the reasons we are looking for a coach is to position CoachAccountable more like that kind of software: built by and for the people who use it.  We want the regular experience of being clients in our system, using it like your clients will use it, and being in constant contact with the coach’s user perspective.  We’re going to expand on what we like and tweak/fix/scrap what we don’t.  We designed the sessions and file sharing features of CoachAccountable as an answer to what I would have used when I had between 4 and 8 coachees during my year in the Team Management and Leadership Program.  I’ve since graduated from that program, so there’s a lot more we can do to get into the shoes of our users.

When we nail it for ourselves, we nail it for a lot of people.

The CoachAccountable team is looking for a business coach. We have three reasons for this: a deeper understanding of the coach-client relationship, a chance to use the CA system firsthand for ourselves, and – obviously – to grow our business!

We also want to do it publicly.  When we describe CoachAccountable to our friends, family members and acquaintances, most of them have no real idea what coaching is all about. “Is it like therapy? Having a personal assistant? Would a coach help me?” are all common questions. We think it would be very cool and instructive to offer ourselves up as public examples of the experience and benefits of coaching.

Here’s the deal: There are 4 of us on the team. We can be coached individually or as a group. We all have varying degrees of experience with coaching and we are positive and motivated. We want to work with the CA system. We haven’t decided how to publicize our coaching experience yet; it’s probably better to discuss that with our coach first.

We have spent much of the last year building CoachAccountable from scratch, so we don’t have a lot of money. We do, however, have a lot of experience in the realm of graphic and web design, development and advertising. In exchange for coaching, we will barter for services and/or create a kick-ass marketing campaign with you that will rock your business. If you are interested in discussing this opportunity in more detail, give me a shout at lee@coachaccountable.com. If you know someone who may be interested, please forward this to them. Thanks!

UPDATE: We have found our coach(es)! Stay tuned for more details…

A couple days ago I shared about our adventures in the world of Transparency in business, or how to foster strong, open relationships with your customers or clients.  I wanna take some time now to talk about who we are relative to the community we serve.  Let me start by getting the big one out of the way:

We are not professional coaches.

We don’t know first hand what it’s like to go to coaching school, how to get started with a coaching business, or where to find coaching clients.  Taking from the experience in coaching we’ve had, we have a pretty good sense of where to go and what to build. At the end of the day, however, we know that the only way we’re going to make CoachAccountable be the best tool for coaches who are actively in the field is by collaborating with coaches who are actively in the field.

We thrive on building client relationships.

CoachAccountable is a bootstrap start-up with no outside funding.  During the whole process of building CA, we have built and managed our design & development agency, Playground Creative,  to keep the lights on and the rent paid.  So while our experience doesn’t come from the coaching profession, we do know a thing or two about managing client relationships (we’re best at keeping clients in love with us by exceeding their expectations).

We’re entrepreneurs at heart.

It takes courage to leave the comforts of a job with a steady paycheck and transition into the world of being responsible for every dollar that comes in.  It can be incredibly rewarding, but there is a whole lot more to running a business than just doing the thing you wanted to do when you started it in the first place. Like coaches we’ve talked to who consistently want to just do coaching, when it comes to our design and development agency we’d rather just do design and development.  Like those coaches, we also know that running your own business demands a lot more than just doing what you love and are best at.  We know that anything that pares down those distractions is a serious win.

That all said, we think we can make huge gains for the coaching world by bringing our talents from the design and development world.  We’re not knee deep it the coaching world with you, but we’re not far from you, either.

Can we get a “woot woot”? Today we successfully completed Beta and launched to the public!

Building this fabulous application has been a long, fascinating and (usually) fun journey. And this is just the beginning. As my mama woould say, “There’s no rest for the wicked.” We are working out the technical details for our Affiliate program and should be launching that soon. We are working on some new solutions to some of our Beta coaches’ feedback. We are also working on a major revamp of the Calendar so that it will sync with your other calendars and will feature online scheduling for Premium accounts. Whew!

We’d like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our Beta coaches who tested the system and got their clients on board and gave us such great feedback and positive support.  You guys totally rock! We couldn’t have done it without you.

The four of us had a most excellent experience this weekend, and that was attending the Big Omaha conference: a gathering of entrepreneurial-minded tech folk.  Attendance covered the gamut from established thought leaders in the field to freelancers who just quit their job eager to create something themselves.

As a group of creatives on the verge of launching our first web app, we felt right at home.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff’s presentation on transparency was a real hit with all of us.   He posited the big question: “what does it take to be so genuine and authentically connected with your customers that you could screw up big time and have them still love you?”  There are a couple of things that  jumped out at me when looking at that:

• Never trying to appear as though you are something you are not. We’ve been a team of only 3 or 4 for a while now, but Lord knows the earliest drafts of our design agency website tried to pass us off as big and corporate.  Turns out we never needed to be: appearing big and deeply established never got us a job, being talented, commited and reliable did.
• Being accessible. Allowing a two-way rapport with customers, with emphasis on the two-way: if our customers take the time to give us feedback or comments, we owe it to them to give a thoughtful reply.
• Publicly owning up to mistakes. Nothing makes failure on someone’s part more painful than having it come with some song and dance trying to hide or justify the problem.  Being open and responsible about mistakes can turn an “us-vs-them” situation into a collaborative community effort to work out a resolution.

It may go without saying given all the above, but for the record I’ll say it plain:

We want to have that kind of relationship with the Coaching community.

While sitting out at the wine tasting rap party at the Big Omaha we came up with a few ideas on how to cultivate just that.  Stay tuned.  In the mean time I invite you to do the same: take a little time sitting outdoors (possibly with a glass of wine) and think about how you could foster such relationship with your clients and the communities you serve.  I’d love to hear what you come up with.