The Power of Online Memberships

Have you ever noticed geese flying overhead, whether that be south for the winter, or back home in the spring? 

In Canada where I live, this is a regular sight and a sure sign of the seasons passing.

From time to time, it's easy to notice that there is a certain pattern to the flying geese. Often, they fly in formation, in a shape that makes it easier to fly as a group than alone, something that conserves energy for the trip.

Online memberships, when built right, are built on the same philosophy, even though they consist of bits, bytes, pixels and websites and not beaks, feathers or wings.

Have you noticed that things are easier to do when you're surrounded by like-minded people going for the same goal?

Training for a marathon seems less onerous when you run with a bunch of buddies.

A garage sale seems like too much bother until the neighbourhood holds one together.

And of course, goals become so much more achievable when there's a coach in the picture.

An online membership usually consists of a private website available to a certain set of people with common interests and goals. 

Much like a library, online memberships take on a certain form, often containing resources such as books, magazines, articles, and even audio and video materials.

Premium membersip sites will often integrate a personal touch by providing support from a real person, whether that be by email, help desk or at a discussion board.

At its most elaborate, membership websites can leak over into the offline world, and members who were previously cyber-buddies only meet face-to-face for the first time and the bonds get cemented. These tend to be memberships that have the most longevity online...they achieve this by weaving in real meetings so the online connection takes on a new dimension.

Online memberships have certain significant characteristics:

A membership site gives your clients access to the information they need, when they want it, not just when you are available by telephone.

A membership site gives your clients access to each other, and the body of knowledge they represent, which can be enormous. The powerful connections that are made are very good fodder for a multidimensional coaching experience for your clients.

A membership site can be demanding to maintain, since new content and material need to be developed to ensure the membership is fresh and up to date. 

With more than a million people in the world now identifying themselves with one of thousands of online groups, online memberships are modern 'tribes' that are filling the gaps being left by neighbourhoods and even church groups of old.

By Andrea J. Lee

A Coaching Secret

I've told people for a long time that one of the "secrets" of coaching is forgiveness. Forgiveness takes your finger out of the dyke of the past so you can let the future flow. Buddha said, "forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past." It is an act of total volition, requiring only a softening of the heart. But how do you forgive the unforgivable?

Like millions of Americans, I have been steeped in this paradox. D-Day + 64 was very difficult. Honoring our dead in the midst of our current war heightened this conflict for me. How can I coach people to forgive when I am having difficult in forgiving?

I've talked about this with people who I deeply respect, trust and love. I share it with you. Forgiveness is releasing the bands on your heart that interfere with your moving forward. To forgive behavior is not to condone it. Condoning is like ignoring, looking the other way. Forgiving is allowing you to look without letting your own history interfere. Personally, I can forgive our soldiers for their appalling behavior and continue to work as hard as I can to change this administration.

But here is a totally spiritual view. It is a view that I hold. I come from the notion that the purpose of life - for each of us - is to be as close to G_d as possible. So that whenever anything bad happens to us, I hold that we have been given another opportunity to move spiritually closer to G_d. I call it the "find the pencil" theory of the universe. When you get closer you get more and more positive feedback -"you're getting warm, warmer, hot, hotter." And when you respond otherwise, the universe gives you increasingly negative feedback - "cool, cold, colder?" So forgiving our soldiers is an opportunity for spiritual growth. You can actually empathize with those you are angry with, because the universe has given them the burden of being that way.

Aside from one cousin, all of my relatives from WWII have passed on. The war exists for me as memory and my experiences as a young boy. I remember going on a train from Brooklyn to Miami and being 'adopted' by a group of soldiers - a fondly remembered highlight of my boyhood - And going to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers - I sat in the left field bleachers, right next to the section reserved for the military - I loved it. I have a photograph of myself at age seven, wearing a full soldier's outfit I love my country.

As I forgive today's unfortunate army, I recover my love, my hero worship and my deep respect for these brave, willing, but unwitting young people. And I grieve for those who have so senselessly died.

Forgiveness works.


By Michael Lipp

Coaching Prime Time

An awful lot of fantastic coaching has been coming out of Hollywood lately, have you noticed?

Whether it's Morgan Spurlock's feature film debut "Supersize Me"...

"Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" also on the big screen...

Or the immense coaching breakthrough moments in "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"...

Tears of joy and newfound confidence in "What Not to Wear"...

And ABC's lifechanging "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition"...

It's undeniable. Coaching has come, and found it's place in what I consider to be some of the very best work coming out of Hollywood.

And that's not even mentioning the more obvious "Starting Over" and other reality TV shows that revolve around the idea of changing lives for the better through Life Coaching. 

Pretty darned cool stuff especially when you consider the limitless reach of television and film in our lives. Will video games with a coaching theme be next? Well if those things have to exist, I can only hope.

Question for you.

Seeing as we're talking about movies and such.

If you were the last coach on earth, and it was up to you to save the world from its impending doom, who would be the 10 people you would do ANYTHING to coach. 

In other words, if your coaching skills were the only thing between survival and certain death and destruction...what 10 people would you choose, out of all the people you know, or maybe who you currently coaching, to coach like a fiend, and save the day?

I know, it's a pretty funny premise. And no I don't think any studios will come a-knocking, but I do have a reason for asking.

I strongly believe that coaching has a large role to grow into, to coach those in the public eye, whether that be actors, directors, studio executives, station owners, news programmers, journalists, politicians at all levels of government.

In fact, I'll call it a responsibility of the coaching profession going forward.

These are the people who through coaching, can be said to have a level of influence that has the potential to spread the effects of coaching to the Nth degree.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing small or unworthy about coaching clients who aren't in the public arena.

But it was Archimedes who said "Give me a lever long enough and I will move the world."


By Andrea J. Lee

Should I Get A Coach?

Why should or would someone hire a life coach? Well, why would anyone purchase the services of a personal trainer, and interior designer or a sports coach - any professional "assistant" for that matter? After all, we all know how to exercise, how to hang a curtain and how to play our own game. But we hire a professional because we know that they will hold us accountable on our goals and objectives - and since we're paying good money for them to be there, often whether we show up or not, we have an added incentive to do so ourselves. We also understand that even though our knowledge of what we're doing may be strong, a professional always has tips, tools and tricks at their disposal which can save us time, aggravation and money. And we get that even the best of best can't "see themselves" from the outside and don't have the objective standpoint about their skills and abilities that a trained and experienced professional can bring to bear on any given situation.

Just as a even a top-notch athlete can benefit from the instruction and observations from an outside source (even a source whose skill does not match that of the athlete's), so can many individuals benefit from an objective, trained and focused viewpoint to help with the issues in their lives. Most people are "too close to the forest to see the trees" in their own life to make these sorts of changes or improvements themselves, or even realize that such change is possible.

Factors such as inertia, pre-programmed or biased thinking about our options and potential, unfamiliarity with opportunities or alternatives outside our normal scope of experience, etc., also make even the smallest changes difficult, if not impossible. How much harder then is it to make drastic, sweeping changes such as reorienting our life purpose, turning a business around or chasing after a long-held dream?

A coach does not have the same limited views about the client's life that the client does, and so can offer insight, ideas, frameworks, paradigms and resources that the client simply doesn't have access to. Coaches create a safe zone within which the client can explore new ideas, try out new directions, and discuss problems and concerns without fear of judgment or criticism, while at the same time providing support systems that enable the client to move forward at whatever pace the client desires.

Life and personal coaching is for anyone who wants: change, joy, a new outlook on life, a better version of the old outlook on life, skill improvement, access to life-improvement resources and tools, a new career, a new life, renewed enthusiasm for their current life, adventure, energy, a sense of freedom, help finding a new direction, help dealing with their current direction, more fun, help setting up systems to support their goals and dreams and many other such quality of life improvements. If that describes you, then why not give it a try? The worst you could do is nothing at all.

By Soni Pitts

The Student Who Knew Too Much

This article is for those of you who coach or mentor. Does this sound familiar?

"Can't I just try to mail or email, do I really have to call"

"I was thinking I could wait to get business cards"

"I wanted to be successful first, before I start to market or network"

"Why do I have to do it that way, I thought I could do it this way"


I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I am always amazed by students who pay us for coaching and then question every thing we tell them to do. The business card one was the kicker. I had just spent 20 minutes telling them how important business cards were, how and who to give them to, and then they had the audacity to tell me that they wanted to wait.

So you say, what do you do. Well, I tell them you paid me to coach you. You said you wanted my expertise, you wanted to be successful, you wanted to make money. However, in order to do that you need to get cards made up and you need to network, and market. You will need to use the telephone and the other forms of marketing outlined in the manual. However, remember this is YOUR BUSINESS. If you choose not to follow the methods I have outlined, then don't expect to succeed during the time frame we initially discussed. When your business doesn't take off, and you don't get the referrals; which in effect, cuts down on the number of deals (transactions, sales, etc. fill in the blank here depending upon the type of coaching you are doing) don't ask me why you didn't succeed, because I will tell you "I told you so".

"The student who knew too much" are usually the ones that have tried other things over the years. Problems rarely occur with individuals who have worked in Corporate America, or other types of jobs during their life. They take what you say to heart and are usually the ones who succeed, and in record time I might add.

So before taking on a student find out what other things they have done, tell them up front the program will work if they follow what you tell them to do, THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS.

Be firm, be upfront, be blunt, and then all we can do is hope for the best.Just know that you are not alone, all coaches and mentors go through this!

Copyright 2003 DeFiore Enterprises

7 Destructive Habits of Incompetent People

WARNING! If you want to have a fantastic life, never engage
yourself in these 7 deadly habits that incompetent people do.

NUMBER 1 - They Think, Say, & Do Negative Things.

Yup. They see problems in every opportunity. 

They complain that the sun is too hot. They cursed the rain
for ruining their plans for the day. They blame the wind
for ruining their hair. 

They think that everyone is against them. They see the problems
but never the solutions. 

Every little bit of difficulty is exaggerated to the point of
tragedy. They regard failures as catastrophes. They become
discouraged easily instead of learning from their mistakes.

They never seem to move forward because they're always afraid
to come out of their comfort zones.

NUMBER 2 - They Act Before They Think.

They move based on instinst or impulse. If they see something
they like, they buy at once without any second thought.

Then they see something better. They regret & curse for not
able to take advantage of the bargain.

Then they spend & spend again until nothing's left. They
don't think about the future. What they're after is the
pleasure they will experience at present.

They don't think about the consequenses. Those who engage
in unsafe sex, criminality, and the like are included in
this group.

NUMBER 3 - They Talk Much More Than They Listen

They want to be the star of the show. So they always engage
in talks that would make them heroes, even to the point of
lying.

Oftentimes they are not aware that what they're saying is not
sensible anymore.

When other people advise them, they close their ears because
they're too proud to admit their mistakes. 

In their mind they're always correct. They reject suggestions
because that will make them feel inferior.

NUMBER 4 - They Give Up Easily

Successful people treat failures as stepping stones to success.

Incompetent ones call it quits upon recognizing the first signs
of failure.

At first, they may be excited to start an endeavor. But then
they lose interest fairly quickly, especially when they
encounter errors.

Then they go & search for a new one. Same story & same results.
Incompetent people don't have the persistence to go on and
fulfill their dreams.

NUMBER 5 - They Try to Bring Others Down To Their Level

Incompetent people envy other successful individuals. Instead
of working hard to be like them, these incompetent ones spread
rumors and try every dirty trick to bring them down.

They could've asked these successful ones nicely. But no, they're
too proud. They don't want to ask advise. Moreover, they're
too negative to accomplish anything.

NUMBER 6 - They Waste Their Time

They don't know what to do next. They may just be contented on
eating, getting drunk, watching TV, or worse, staring at the
blank wall with no thoughts whatsoever to improve their lives.

It's perfectly fine to enjoy once in a while. But time should be
managed efficiently in order to succeed. There should be a
proper balance between work & pleasure.

NUMBER 7 - They Take the Easy Way Out

If there are two roads to choose from, incompetent people would
choose the wider road with less rewards than the narrower road
with much better rewards at the end.

They don't want any suffering or hardship. They want a good life.

What these people don't know is that what you reap is what you
sow. Efforts & action will not go unnoticed. 

If only they would be willing to sacrifice a little, they would
be much better off. 

Successful people made it through trials & error. They never
give up. They are willing to do everything necessary to achieve
what they aspire for in life.

By Michael Lee

Do You Dither in Your Job Search?

I looked up the definition of "to dither" before writing this article. It is to be agitated and in a nervous state.

My definition, however, as it relates to a job seeker is that some people will spend many minutes and hours, seeking a way out of looking for a job. It is a neighbor of procrastination.

But "dithering" also can mean, going from one activity to another. For example: Writing down names of people to call about jobs, but never making the calls or putting one's attention onto other things.

All kinds of motions/actions are made to find a job.They all add up to busy work and the active tasks are left out.

How will a person stop this aimlessness and get something done on their own behalf? Setting goals with a definite timeline to achieve them, are what job seekers HAVE to do.

"Dithering" is good for butterflies and birds, but not for job seekers.

By Marilyn J. Tellez, M.A.