The CoachAccountable Blog

I got a bit of feedback recently regarding the management of Groups, in particular managing a large number of them.  As of about a week ago Groups were listed in the order in which you created them, and one of my customers suggested it might be nice to have the most recently created on the top of the page, rather than at the bottom.

I thought about it for a minute and realized this was worth handling quickly.  To her I said:

Hmm…

Good call!  Perhaps I need to add the ability to sort groups so you’ve got total control.  Give me a minute! :)

John

Perhaps most important in this communication was the postscript:

PS: I love that you guys, as power users, are so up on giving me feedback.  CoachAccountable is better for it!

Her reply:

Thanks! Glad you are cool with it :) Some time I feel like a pain…

A pain?  I quickly wrote back to set the record straight, for her and now here on the blog for everyone else:

Nope,

I totally love it: customers who might be conventionally categorized as a pain are my favorite, because y’all challenge and demand of me to make a system that JUST SINGS.  When I nail it for you guys, I nail it for a lot of other people who might not feel so free to be as vocal in demanding perfection.

The end result is a really sharp system that people are all the more apt to fall in love with, which, as you might imagine, is good for business! :)

Though it’s been a much longer than anticipated time in coming (more on that later), Team Edition beta is now ready to go.

For my beta testers I’ve just installed a new section on their My Account page which gives them the power to migrate their account:

Migrating to Team Edition takes but a few clicks and a few seconds, and is fully reversible.

I can’t wait to see how it performs in the wild.  The basics of managing a team of coaches and overseeing a full roster of clients are solid, and in the coming weeks with the aid and input of my beta testers I’ll be adding numerous power tools for organizational coaching management.  Together we’ll play at the evolution for a few weeks, eventually leading up to the release of Team Edition to the general public.

The next chapter of CoachAccountable is now officially begun.  My gratitude to the many who have given me both their interest in Team, as well as their patience with its arrival!

Yesterday I had a fun chat come in to me from the website.  A fellow from Poland started it off by writing:

I just found your web software
are you really founder of this?

To which I replied “I am indeed.”

wow
can I be frankly?

To which I replied “Please do.”

sound like: hmm is they have so SMALL about of business, that founder can spend time to chat ??
because for example I am founder of my own company and its hard to talk with me – only via coaching session :)

To that I chuckled.  That’s a fair assessment, and since I have no hang up about CoachAccountable being a tidy, one-man operation realized then and there just how comfortable I am with projecting that appearance.  I replied the truth, the last line of which was an insight which came to me on the spot:

Yep. For the time being I’m going to enjoy for as long as I can the luxury of being able to talk directly with the community I’m serving.
It makes a huge difference for me to be able to do so,
you might think of it as the best sort of market research one could possibly do.

That about says it all.  Being available to chat keeps causing great conversations.  These conversations bring super useful insights to me and helpful answers to people who chat me (to say nothing of the sense of connection to this being a real thing made by a real guy and not just some faceless company).

So THAT’s why, yes, you can still chat with the founder of CoachAccountable.

I’m gonna ride this train for as long as I can.

No, seriously.

That was oddly satisfying.

I just released a major update to the CoachAccountable code base and database structure, and if I’ve done it correctly no one will notice any change whatsoever.

What’s the big deal?  I’ve spent the last week overhauling the mechanics of user accounts, news items, and customizable widget items including note areas and task lists.

(Especially the widget items, which were a kludge of bloated code to cover left-column widgets for the coach’s dashboard, the client centers, and the client view pages.  My only excuse is that this code harkened back to nearly five years ago in the early days of CA 1.0’s development, and this is largely the reason why widgets are some of the most useless and least interesting parts of the system.  This too shall pass.)

All of this under-the-hood work was in the interest of making a more robust and generally powerful platform upon which to build Team Edition.  As mentioned in a little update note a week ago, my fall emphasis on Team had given way to more immediately relevant work of marketing and outreach.  But it feels good to be back on the case of building Team.

Remixing user accounts was to enable a single user account to have multiple roles within CoachAccountable (e.g. admin of a Team, coach to his clients, and client of some other coach).  Remixing news items was to enable Team Admins to get new alerts just as coaches do now (and who knows, down the road coaches who would like to send news alerts to their clients may get their wish).  And remixing widgets was to enable Team Admins to enjoy flexible configuration of tools to be easily added in a variety of contexts, as well as to pave the way for more interesting ones.

All in all a good week, and Team Edition continues to progress.  Soon I’ll be setting my beta testers up with Team accounts of their own, bringing CoachAccountable a giant and very real step closer to supporting multiple-coach coaching organizations.

When setting up a new client in CoachAccountable, the system makes it super easy to send an invitation email which welcomes them into the system right away.  But you might want to hold off of that for just a short while.  Here’s why.

As coaches we want our clients’ experience of our coaching to be a delight at every step, and their first run experience with CoachAccountable is no different.  By taking 5-10 minutes on a new client BEFORE inviting them in you can set things up so that they’ll immediately feel right at home.

First things first: your smiling face.  This actually isn’t something you have to do for every client, rather just once and you’ll be set for everyone.  The very first thing your clients will see when they click the magic registration link is the registration page.  If you’ve got your own headshot uploaded to your coach account, they’ll see that photo of you and instantly know they’re in the right place. Oh, and if you’ve set up your branding, this page will show with your colors and logo, too.

A picture of you lets your client know they’re in the right place. This is most reassuring for a technophobe.

Once your client registers their user account with you, unless you’ve intervened they’ll be greeted by a blank slate for what’s next:

This looks pretty enough, yes, but it doesn’t provide your client with a lot of clues as to what business they have here in this fancy, newfangled online system.

The other tabs are also friendly and inviting, but similarly suffer from the same problem of being not at all  personalized to what your client would or should care about:

So we instead want to set the stage.  Setting the stage means our clients are going to immediately know what’s going on, understand how things fit together, and appreciate why that’s cool.

Fortunately for us it’s pretty simple: just adding in a few items will make all the difference.  Here are some that I recommend:

Notes from their last session.  Just a few paragraphs and/or bullet points will do.  If this is a truly new client, then briefly write up your understanding of what they have at stake for coaching.  Really anything that conveys “here’s what’s going on for you, here’s what we’re going to work on, and here’s the game moving forward” will work beautifully.

A few Actions with precise deadlines.  Add however many are appropriate to the situation.  These may be basic tasks you have to get any new client started, or items that concern projects already underway.  I recommend one that’s due very soon called “Mark your first Action complete” so that they can see what it’s like to do just that.  A little visual candy and feedback from the machine will make it very satisfying for them (have you seen what it’s like when you mark one complete yourself?).

A shared file or two.  If you have typical “getting started” resources this is the perfect time to share them, and doing so gives your client practice with accessing files in the system.  You might tie this in with an Action that references a shared file, e.g. “Read our Coaching Practices document”.

A Worksheet assignment.  Perhaps you’d like a new client to take a few minutes and fill out a little Worksheet pertaining to getting started with your coaching.  Since you’re just setting the stage right now, be certain to NOT send your client a notification about the Worksheet (which at this point would amount to jumping the gun).

The next scheduled Appointment.  If you know when your next coaching session will be, set that up with a useful reminder or two.  It’ll appear in their “Up Next” listing and they’ll be able to set reminders about it for themselves as well.

A Metric.  Metrics are the most intimidating feature of CoachAccountable, but when you see one all set up (especially with a target set and a few data points already in there) they quickly make a lot of sense.  If there is any sort of measurable progress that you’ll be working on with your client, make a Metric to track it.  If you’re lucky enough to have a few data points from the recent past you can back-date the Metric and add that data in straightaway–a really nice touch to have your client get excited about what you’re working towards.

If you can add all of the above for a new client that is, of course, fantastic.  But even if you only add in two or three your client will immediately see that this system is tailored specifically to what they’re working on, and they’ll see for themselves how the pieces fit together (and likely feel comfortable straightaway with setting up things for themselves).

Do you have a fairly set series of onboarding items? You can actually set this sequence up ahead of time for ALL your clients as a Course, then just enroll each new client into said Course.

When this is the first thing your client sees, they recognize the account as lovingly set up just for them.

Once the stage is set, THEN the time is ideal to go ahead and invite them.  Just go to the “Clients” tab on your dashboard and click the big “Invite” button on your client:

Doing this right is the stuff of having your clients immediately loving your system, and appreciating the organization and attention to detail of your coaching.

It’s worth the effort, ESPECIALLY when making first impressions.

Ready to set up a simple onboarding series for your clients and get them pumped about using software to achieve their goals more efficiently? Sign up – it’s free for 30 days.

It’s been a delightful week on the CoachAccountable customer interaction front.

Last week I realized that one of the coaches on CoachAccountable is located right here in Denver.  So on Monday, after attending her yoga class, I spent two hours with her at a nearby Village Inn over coffee comparing notes and swapping stories.  I was tickled to hear what a perfect fit CoachAccountable continues to be for her practice, and as we parted company that night I felt thoroughly on the right track.

Then on Tuesday I got one of the most deeply complimentary comments I’ve ever received on this blog, leaving me feel utterly appreciated for willingness (and frankly my joy) to listen to what coaches need and respond accordingly in the growth and evolution of this platform.  To have it be said that my baby is “the best damn software application I’ve found out there after spending literally years looking around and trying and testing a litany of apps” in a public forum is high praise indeed, and from a rather domain-savvy individual no less.

The on Wednesday I enjoyed two hours on the phone with a woman from the East Coast who’d just gotten signed up with her account and was keen to get oriented and running as soon as possible.  I don’t think either of us expected our exchange to last quite so long, but there was just so much good stuff to cover.  I was delighted to get a glimpse into what’s confusing for a newcomer, and she was delighted to have me point out all the ways in which the system is already perfectly equipped for her needs.  To hear her excited reactions to one feature after another was perhaps the best hands-on experience I’ve ever had of a new coach’s first impressions of CA, and it utterly made my day.

To summarize: interactions with coaches are the best, and I shall continue encouraging that sort of thing.  INCLUDING a public write up of how fun it is to connect (ahem).  If you want to get acquainted and chat with me about the system sometime on the phone (or better yet are in the Denver area and would care to meet up), know in advance that I’m all for it, so drop me a line.

CoachAccountable isn’t some big faceless company where all the real people are hidden behind support ticket systems and lengthy phone wait times.  Rather: it’s just some dude who’s out to make seminal contributions to the field of coaching.  A dude who, for now, still has time to reply to your emails and chat with you on the phone.

The subject of today’s Delightful Collaboration is Michael Leahy of Brave Hearts Mentoring, who since becoming a user of CoachAccountable has had an exceptionally high percentage of his suggestions make it in to CoachAccountable.  Michael comes from a background of software development, and that has a lot to do with the regularity with which he’s able to perceive new features which would be more universally beneficial.  But moreover he’s a power user, and, for example, the sheer volume of appointments that he schedules per week gives him a unique insight into how things would be better to serve both power users and regular users alike.

So let’s take a look at his contributions thus far:

Smarter Appointment Listings

When you have a lot of clients and they each have a few scheduled, the dashboard listing of all upcoming appointments can be quickly overwhelming.  Sorted as they were (strictly by date), the pending appointment requests easily got lost in the shuffle.  Since each pending request begs a response, accept or decline, that turns out to be a problem.

Now the pending requests are floated up to the top, ready for responding to.  And among all upcoming appointments, now only the first 10 appear.  This puts into focus only the most immediately relevant ones.  To look further out, a handy “View all upcoming” button reveals the entire collection.

Coach-Only Appointment Types

Previously, any type of appointment that a coach could schedule was available for a client to schedule as well (assuming client scheduling was enabled).  But sometimes that’s not ideal, and there are some types of appointments which should be reserved for only the coach.

Now appointment types can be designated as schedule-able only by the coach.

Calendar-Embeddable Exceptions

Contrary to the model I’ve worked in and assumed of others, where the “office hours” into which clients can book themselves are more limited, the way Michael works is that essentially all work hours are open to client scheduling.  So keeping accurate exceptions to availability is critical to ensuring that clients schedule themselves at workable times.

Rather than have other life happenings in a separate calendar and have those happenings also need to be entered as exceptions in CoachAccountable, Michael figured it’s much easier to setup those exceptions once in CoachAccountable and then have then appear in his regular calendar software.  So now the collection of availability exceptions can be embedded into iCal, Outlook, and other systems much like appointment calendars can be.

Private Notes for Clients

In Michael’s work, where clients are working on overcoming sexual addiction, privacy is of utmost importance.  In the past I’d been remiss to add much to do about privacy between coach and client, reasoning instead from a premise of totally open and shared collaboration, but Michael sold me on a very good point: yes, client accounts are akin to a guest in the coach’s house, but more than that client accounts can be a certain sanctuary for clients where everything is kept all together as a useful resource, and that resource gets even better when a client is free to have their own privacy within it as well.

Thus clients too can create private journal entries for their eyes only, allowing them to feel even more at home within their client account.

Self-Assigned Worksheets

Here again Michael’s status as a power user reveals insight: before an appointment, Michael’s clients fill out a worksheet.  With so many clients having so many regular appointments, the need for coach to assign the worksheet for each one becomes cumbersome quickly.

Thus now specific worksheets can be made available for self-assignment by clients.

There are a few other tweaks,  and a spelling mistake catch or two, but the above captures the broad strokes of Michael’s contribution to date.  It’s an impressive set and speaks volumes to Michael’s sense for what’s widely useful.  In fact, while writing this post Michael had another good idea in my inbox which I reckon I’ll be adding: the ability to share library files with some or all clients in one fell swoop.

Thanks Michael for bringing your insight to the party, CoachAccountable is even better for it.

After explaining in detail the reasoning behind why I charge $50/month for white-labeling, I was delighted to receive a comment containing most thorough dissent from Michael Leahy, one of the newer customers of CoachAccountable, and one of my favorite for his high level of engagement and input.

I believe it’s the first real criticism ever to be expressed in the comments of this humble blog, and while the always-positive environment of the community’s feedback is a delightful boon to my morale, it does pose within it the chance of this devolving into a sort of rosy echo chamber.  By contrast, Michael’s strong opposition brings forth the chance for a lively exchange and exploration of ideas (if you haven’t read it yet, go check it out first before continuing), and affords me the chance to get off my laurels and work through a thoughtful response.

This is good stuff, so I’ve opted to move this more center stage into a post of its own rather than have it languish in the comments section.

Here is what I sent last night in response to Michael’s comments, edited slightly to make it fit for public consumption:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your feedback.

After reading it through I’m left to wonder in earnest: why are you still a customer?  In asking that I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t make sense that you are, for I can think of numerous reasons based on your kind feedback that the system is overall doing good things for you and your clients.  But now on two separate occasions, one private and one public, you have railed against the pricing I have set to say it is not cost effective for you, despite that pricing being identical to what it was when you first signed up (barring the addition of Groups, which you then didn’t even know existed).

Moreover in your public comments you have insinuated that I’m ignoring the needs of my customers, am gambling with their future to overvalue and overprice, and am acting in a way that is emotionally too attached.  All while stating plainly that this is why software developers fail as business people.

I don’t want you to be suffering at my hands if you feel I’m recklessly running my software business.  I would miss you as a substantial paying customer, and more importantly as a fan and collaborator with your wonderful and insightful feedback.  But I will understand if my choices in the matter don’t work for you, and I will continue on serving the ever growing number of other coaches who do indeed vet my estimation of value by their willingness to pay for it and by their expressed appreciation.

Whatever your motives and whatever works for you ultimately in your coaching solution, I’m for it.

I’ll end by answering your question of why on earth I would hold out for a higher fee “knowing” your hypothetical and/or inaccurate suggested numbers, and it’s a reiteration of what I’ve already stated in the post: before I even contemplate lowering my pricing to serve the masses, I’m going to continue to work VERY HARD to make it so that your average coach, like you for example, can effectively sell and deliver coaching services to N more clients per month than they otherwise could, at their usual $X client revenue per month, such that N times $X is WAY more than the monthly $Y for CoachAccountable.

Ask for yourself what N needs to be in order to satisfy that equation, 3?  2?  Perhaps even 1?  For most coaches’ value of $X, I can put way more money in their pocket by helping them make N higher than I ever could by minimizing $Y.  (And then there’s the value those N additional people will get by being effectively coached, also a lovely outcome.)

That is the game I will continue to play as I grow this platform.  Whether you’re in or out, you have my deepest respect.

Cheers,
John

Fun stuff.  Nothing like a public challenge to bring out one’s A game.

After sleeping on it I see there’s one other piece of clarification which I should probably add.  I mentioned in an offhand way that I will accept going out of business should I fail to make a product worth the cost that I have set.  Michael says it is NOT OK for my customers if I happen to miscalculate and happen to go out of business, and wonders if I was being trite in saying that.

The answer is yes and no: I’m completely serious when I say I deserve to go out of business should I fail to create something worthwhile, AND it’s a fairly flippant remark to make at this stage, given the ever growing number of paying customers whose average spend is about $100 a month.  So don’t worry, CoachAccountable isn’t going anywhere.

Michael was kind enough to reply this morning.  It’s not my place to quote his words publicly, but suffice it to say his words came from a place of impassioned commitment to see CoachAccountable thrive, a sort of tough love that perhaps wasn’t fitting for public display.  Fair enough, I’d say it was every bit as pardonable and cliché‎ as a parent who cramps his teenager’s style through the occasional bout of excessive worry.  I’m good with it.

So to you, Michael, a heartfelt thanks for your contribution to a lively exchange.  In doing so you’ve given me a gem of an opportunity, to stumble upon what is perhaps the most real claim of value that I can offer via CoachAccountable:

It’s totally not catchy, but goodness the implications of this are nice for the future of CoachAccountable, the coaches it serves, and their naturally results-getting clients.

Note: As of late 2017, White Labeling is completely free/no longer entails any surcharge whatsoever–this article remains intact for historical purposes. :)

This is the thing about CoachAccountable for which I definitely take the most heat, that the right to white-label and style it as your own adds fifty bucks to the monthly subscription price.

I can appreciate that $50/month for this can be hard to swallow, and yes, I am aware that the Coaches Console offers this for free.

So why would I do this?

No, it’s not a ploy to get more CoachAccountable brand exposure out to potential customers, I’m going to go out on a limb here to surmise that the overlap between people being coached and people who might become customers is vanishingly small.

Here are the real reasons.

First it represents a sort of price segmentation that ultimately leads to lower pricing for coaches who can do without.  CoachAccountable remains a completely self-funded start up.  This is lovely, for as such I can focus on deliberately and methodically crafting a great product without investors breathing down my neck looking anxiously for their return on investment. But it means I still need this to be profitable enough for me to make a living off of it.

So charging larger outfits a little more for a premium add-on helps me grow the platform in this still-early phase of CoachAccountable’s existence.

Consider the grid below.   Larger, more established coaching practices generally fall in the lower-right quadrant.  They pay a little more for the premium add-on and it’s win-win.  The push back I get about the surcharge generally comes from the upper-right quadrant.   I totally understand the sentiment.  In those cases I actually encourage coaches with smaller client rosters (i.e. the situation in which the $50 flat fee amounts to a high per-client price hike) to consider that white labeling isn’t all that important, and that clients generally don’t think any less of the coaching experience when it comes with the CoachAccountable branding.

Indeed, the results one gets being coached are going to be the same whether it’s the CoachAccountable logo at the top of the screen or some other.

The second reason is to hold myself tightly to the cause of making a substantially value-adding piece of software.  If matching or beating someone else’s price is my way of earning the business of a paying customer, it means I can get away with a shoddier product.  So for now, as with the other premium add-ons (and even the core system), I’d rather be on the hook to make while labeling great and truly worth the cost.  If it turns out it’s not worth the money, no worries.  Rather than bargaining down, let me go back to the drawing board and make it better (and gracefully accept going out of business if I fail).

Finally, the premium surcharge for white labeling enables me to give due credit of earnest usage to those willing to pay the $50/month.  I still regularly take suggestions and feedback direct from my customers, from the $20/month Starter plan on up.  While I continue to evolve this platform, the whole pricing structure of CoachAccountable assures me that I’m taking my input from people who are vested enough to invest a few bucks a month into their system, ones who expect so much more than some cheap CRM with the word “coaching” on it.

So that’s why white labeling costs $50 extra per month, and similar reasoning applies to Courses and recently released Groups.  It’s not a popular choice, but a very deliberately strategic one.  To those who mind, I apologize and hope you’ll bear with me.

For those who don’t, I thank you for your enabling role in CoachAccountable’s growth.

Sometimes a simple misunderstanding reveals a good idea I never thought of.

In this instance of Delightful Collaboration that good idea came from David Green of LeadershipMARC, who forwarded me a URL for a page on CoachAccountable and wondered how to have that page be without the name of one of his clients:

The name is a fake but the branding is real.

I explained the misunderstanding, that this link was meant only to be the special page for his client to register her account (and that since that registration was already done, that’s why a login shows instead).  He countered with a most sensible expressed desire:

But I am looking for a landing page like that off of my website.

It’s a very good look.

Please tell me it’s possible.

Prior to this moment that screen, in all its customized, white-labeled glory, was only meant to be a one-off experience for clients.  But indeed it is a snappy login page, and a useful alternative to embedding a small login widget on one’s own site.  Immediately I agreed that it should be available to serve as coach’s own login page for their system, and took about 15 minutes to cook up a client-neutral variation:

Fit for any client of a given coach to login, branded to match his or her white-label settings.

Then I sent this reply:

David, I gotta hand it to you:

That’s a REALLY good idea.  So I’ve cooked up just that for you.  If you go to My CA >> My System >> White-Label Branding you’ll find a new piece there, “Customized Login Page”.  There you’ll find a magic link that is suitable for linking to as a branded, general purpose login for your clients.

Thanks for making the request, I imagine many other coaches will enjoy it as well!

I hope that they will!