“Existence system” is not a phrase commonly known or used in English.  A Google search for it in quotes yields a paltry 7,470 results and none of the first few pages of results contain the meaning I intend to share here, so let’s look at the phrase newly.

Said another way, I mean: systems for keeping things in existence*.  We all know the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind”, right?  Keeping something in existence means keeping it present over time: it is the antithesis of letting something fall through the cracks. Many people don’t need an existence system: it is easy to remember the big things like going to work on Monday morning and brushing the teeth at night.  If those are your only responsibilities in a typical week, you really don’t need to check in with a day planner first thing in the morning.  And if you should happen to forget Aunt Pam’s birthday, well, she’ll probably understand.

But if you’re Up To Something, something that demands more of you than getting through a regular work schedule and maintaining basic hygiene, then an existence system is quickly relevant.  When you are Up To Something there are actions to take, promises to keep, appointments to attend and so on, and each thing has its place in time.  Letting one of these things slip through the cracks is counterproductive, and so staying present to all of them is very useful.

Coaches are almost invariably coaching people who are Up To Something.  Thus, coaches themselves are almost invariably Up To Something.  Existence systems become doubly relevant in the coaching profession.  What is your existence system?  How about your clients’?  Do they ever intersect?

Next: What makes an existence system great?

*You probably know of many existence systems, even if you’ve never called them by that name.  PDA’s, MS Outlook, day planners, Google Calendars, a cell phone that beeps at you 2 minutes before you’re supposed to hop onto that conference call… these are all examples of systems to keep you present to what’s going on and when.

We’ve released a few new features in CoachAccountable. First, our Premium account holders can now enjoy the convenience of online scheduling. To set up appointment types, your general availability and email reminders, go to MyCA, then MySystem and click on Appointment Scheduling. Once you have enabled this feature, your clients will be able to schedule or reschedule appointments with you directly from their Client Pages. These appointments will show up on your Calendar, which brings us to…

Calendar Imports! Regardless of your account type, you can now import your current Outlook, iCal, Google and other calendars into CoachAccountable. Go to your Calendar and click on the “Import Calendar” button an the bottom of the mini-calendar view. There is inline help there to quickly walk you through the process. You can also export iCal using a private data feed URL. We are exploring other sync options and will keep you posted. Also coming up shortly: day, week and agenda views.

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.

As the French philosopher Henri Bergson said, “You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be in business tomorrow.” Today’s tools can support and enhance your coaching relationships. They can help your clients reach their goals more quickly and easily. Today’s tools are web-based, affordable and really, really cool.

Many coaches already interact with their clients using web technology such as webinars, video conferencing, podcasts and more. Other coaches use the telephone, email, and a fax machine. Think for a moment about your coaching style and your clients. If you look at your practice with an open mind, there are probably loads of ways to reduce repetitive tasks, improve your service and streamline your marketing. Here are just a few suggestions:

- Create online forms for your clients with Wufoo. It is quick to set up and eliminates emailing, printing and faxing documents back and forth. Plus, all your information is then available in one place. Bonus: you can also accept online payments.

- Add online scheduling to your site.

- Record your session calls. Give the files to your clients for future review.

- Easily create beautiful newsletters or weekly coaching tips to send to your clients and contacts.

You can also use online tools with your clients to improve organization, accountability and productivity. Basecamp is a brilliantly simple project management system used by tens of thousands of small businesses; I personally would be lost without it. There are applications that help with weight loss, job searching, financial accountability and planning, dating and so much more. Mashable.com has great lists and reviews of web applications of all stripes. Many have free versions.

At the end of the day…

You don’t need to spend hours glued in front of your computer; if you can’t see how something could be useful to you in 10 minutes then it is probably not a good fit. Find a few online applications that look interesting and give them a spin. Think of one area of your business that could use an upgrade or one client’s particular need and search out a solution to that problem. A little bit of research and possibly an afternoon of restructuring could save you hours each week and rejuvenate your coaching business.

Many people lament that the Internet is killing interpersonal relationships. Sure, it is possible to never leave your house and interact with other people solely as a warlord elf in an online fantasy game. For the most part, however, I would argue that the Internet is changing and enriching the way we interact as communities. It gives us tools to connect, collaborate, and communicate in new and organic ways.

With all this bonding and idea-swapping and general chatter happening, the possibilities for your coaching business are limited only by your imagination.  If you are finding that your more traditional marketing isn’t working as well as you’d like, try social networking on for size; you sure can’t beat the price. What kind of clients do you want? What is your niche? Seek out that community through blogs (technorati is a great place to start) and social networks such as Facebook and Linkedin. Offer up some really good, free information. Join conversations on Twitter or start new ones on forums relevant to your expertise. If you provide value to the discussions, people will respect you and seek you out.

Do you already have a great community of clients and friends?  Start your own free social network.   Say, for example, that you are a nutrition coach.  You create the “Vibrant Health Network”, which is fully branded and customized with useful features. You invite all your clients, past and present. Membership is open, so they invite their own friends and family. You start subgroups just for your teleclasses so that your clients can chat and support each other. You post tips, recipes, and videos and other people follow suit. Your network is chock full of useful information and is growing daily. Your eBooks sell like crazy and your events fill up overnight. You are wildly successful.

Next time – Coaching 2.0: Use the right tools for the job.

Quite frankly, there is a sea of coach sites out there that appear to have been created in the late 1990’s with flashing animations, aggressive pop-ups and photos that look like they were taken at Glamour Shots. A well-designed coach site seems to be the exception, not the rule. Personally, I blame this on the large number of shockingly ugly websites out there that sell web marketing tips and tools to coaches.  They have led you astray.

We have a 7-second attention span when surfing the web so your site’s appearance and usability are really important. Your philosophy may be compelling and your clients’ results extraordinary, but I will probably never learn that if your site is outdated, hard to navigate or hurts my eyes. Consciously or unconsciously, I will think that you are offering an inferior service and move on to something else. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t go for a job interview in MC Hammer pants and a tube top.

Here are some tips for creating a lovely and inviting website:

- What qualities do you want to be associated with? Find sites that give you that feeling and emulate them.

- Make sure your navigation is simple, straightforward and identical on every page.

- 90% of the time people scan information, they don’t read from top to bottom. Break up your material with titles and subtitles. Write clearly and concisely. Don’t write too much on one page (300-500 words tops, less is better.)

- At the end of the day, content trumps design. Give viewers some useful new knowledge for free, without making them sign up for your newsletter to get it. If your content is good enough, they will hand over their email address anyway because they want to know more.

- Take a step back. Would you hire you based on your website? Find a few friends who will be totally honest with you and get their opinion as well.

Next up – Coaching 2.0: Forget traditional marketing; it is all about community.

Having an online presence is no longer an option.  A recent Pew study showed that 73% of Americans now use the Internet.  A March 2009 Gallop poll reported that about half of adults are online for more than an hour per day. Many people will not hire a plumber without first looking them up online. Like it or not, your potential clients are typing your name into search engines. They want to get to know you virtually before you ever talk on the phone or meet in person. Your website should tell them about you, your business and your coaching style in some depth. Bonus points for having a blog.

You can hire a web company to build you a great site if you have some extra marketing dollars lying around, but there are lots of fantastic companies online that make building your own site easy, even enjoyable. A few good options to get you started include: www.webs.com, www.joomla.org, and www.weebly.com.

A few further things you can do to improve your site’s visibility: If possible, include metaData (the code that searchbots look for when ranking your site) such as site maps and keywords. After you have created a site (or updated your old site), take a moment to register it at the major search engines like Google and Yahoo as well as the Open Directory Project.  If your url (web address) is new or has changed, make sure to update it in any relevant coaching directories or lists – or find new ones. The more links there are to your site, the better your search engine rating will be.

Coming soon – Coaching 2.0: Looks matter.

We have officially been in Beta for a few weeks now and are super excited about how things are progressing. We have a great group of Beta users and we’ve just sent out our first questionnaire so we should have a solid range of feedback to begin our next development phase next week. Some things that will be updated include time zones and currencies so the system will be useful worldwide. Also, we will be building out new features on the calendar and working to make CoachAccountable sync with a few other popular systems. We will keep you posted as new features arise.

On a different note, we have been brainstorming ways to add more value for the coaching community at large. We aren’t professional coaches, so we won’t presume to tell you anything about being a coach or how to coach. However, one thing that we know pretty well is web technology, including applications, social networking, and future trends. We thought we could provide some tips and tutorials for coaches on improving their business with technology. Keep checking back here to see what we find. Also, if you have any questions about technology at all (from super basic to advanced or even theoretical) please just ask! If you want to know, I’m sure there are others out there with the same issue. We would love to find the answer. Cheers!

Alright, folks. No one is as anxious as we are to get this bad puppy up and running. We can’t wait to get our BETA testers plugged in. And it’s coming…very soon.

November was a bit crazy. Much-needed vacations, cross-Atlantic visits from family, and a lot of outside work kept us from launching Beta last month. However, that turned out to be a really good thing. We’ve been getting some great feedback from coaches (thank you! please keep it coming, every bit is super useful.) Looking at these pearls of real-life wisdom, we realized we needed to rethink some of the design and functionality to make it more intuitive and versatile.That led to a major re-think and redesign, which is complete as of today. Woot!

Included in the changes are a more customizable system to that coaches can truly set up their business any way that works for them. Drag-and-drop widgets allow you to choose which things you want to be able to see at a glance, such as to-do lists (for you or your VA) outstanding invoices, your upcoming appointments, etc. A brand new template system lets you to input your intake forms, questionnaires, and worksheets easily into the system and have your clients fill them out on-line, where they can always be accessed in a moment by both of you or emailed as a pdf. There’s also a great Library for uploading and sharing newsletters, audio files, anything you want. We’ve been working on the Billing system and think we’ve found a great intuitive way for coaches & clients to manage their financial agreements and clients can even pay online from within their system. All in all, it’s looking fantastic. We sure hope you’ll agree.

Final development has begun (and knowing John, it’ll go QUICK – particularly if we bring him hot meals occasionally!) With the holidays coming up, we are aiming for a late-January Beta launch. There’s still space for testers, so sign up and tell your coaching friends to do the same. There’s no long-term commitment, you get early access to a fully-functioning system and you’ll get 6 months FREE upgrade once we’ve released to the public. Sweet!