Celebration

Yesterday we had a celebration in the family, and it was wonderful to reflect on the last year and notice what had changed. Monumental occasions make us take stock so to speak. It was wonderful to discover where we were, and discuss our future plans, smile at our learnings and enjoy the moment with each other.

So when you achieve a milestone, a birthday, a goal, anniversary you need to celebrate: Here are some ideas on how to do just that!: (for your partner)

• Take your loved one to lunch/dinner, let them pick the restaurant


• Tell them how much you appreciate them


• Treat them with a surprise


• Write them a poem from the heart


• Bake them a cake and put lots of love into your cooking


• Plan to spoil them, with a gift, gestures, your undivided attention


• Get excited about achieving the goal, and treat yourself!


• Go for a walk in nature, hand in hand and soak up the environment


• Be your positive self


• (any others???)

Sometimes we are too busy to STOP and celebrate as we have already cast our eyes on the next goal post. Even our birthdays are not celebrated as we get older we just let the day roll by without any significance. It is up to us/our partners to shine the day and acknowledge our special day.

Imagine what example you set for your children? Taking time OUT matters.

It's Time to Just do it

This morning I took the plunge literally, and swam in our local salt water pool. It wasn't very warm but I had been putting it off long enough so it was time to just do it! I did the usual self-talk to inspire me as I was on constant conversation with why I should just wait until it was warmer. Talk about conflict! Naturally the wussy-side won the conversation until TODAY.



The energy one uses to sit on the fence is amazing, all this too-ing and fro-ing like a tennis rally, it is exhausting and then the opportunity goes and you are left wondering why you just didn't act! This can apply to most areas in our lives. Just say we want to make contact with someone new and we:

• Sit on the fence
• Think they are too busy to be approached
• Doubt our abilities to strike a conversation
• Feel pressured and walk away
• Think about it the WHOLE day
• Wonder 'what if??'

How about instead, we have the 'just do it attitude' you will surprise yourself at the results, you will feel:

• Relieved you have done it
• Increased your self confidence
• You smile more
• Feel like you can approach others too
• Can think about other things as your energy has been released
• wonder why you didn't do it earlier??

It felt great to get on with it and complete an action, my body was greatful for the exercise and the activity and my mind was at last in peace....

Having FUN

I know most adults have challenges around celebrating their inner child. As most adults are too busy being serious and keeping it together, no matter what! So I would like to share some tips that will foster this and make you laugh at life and make you loosen up a little..

1. Surprise yourself: by challenging yourself to do something completely out of character, smiling to strangers on the train, wear some clothing that is loud and bold/confident.



2. Wear a red nose in the office, and pretend nothing is the matter



3. If you have kids, mirror their behaviour for part of the day and see what happens!



4. Rent a comedy DVD and LAUGH so much your tummy hurts



5. Have a Tickle-Attack: Surprise your partner or child and tickle them all over!



6. Bake your favorite childhood recipe and feel your inner child coming out



7. When listening to your Ipod/mp3 player SING out LOUD no matter how bad you sing



8. Dance in your living room and do a couple of air-guitars!



9. Write an email to your boss/supervisor with as many colours as possible

Left 10 blank so you can create your own FUN tip and send it over, lets see how many ideas we can come up with..

A smile is worth a thousand words, so get smiling...

What others Think..

I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients last week, about 'fitting in and doing what others do' . In essence it was about taking on board what others thought about our actions. When we respect our friends' opinion we take on board what they have to say, and sometimes this can cause us some headache, especially if we are doing the opposite.

We crave conformity to be like everybody else to fit in and not shine too much. Well I think you need to:

• Follow your passion your ideas


• Be true to your values and desires


• Listening to these outside voices and acting on their opinions when you are not in agreement shows you are not being true to your path


• Everybody is different so if you cap yourself then fine, but WHY???


• Look at the flip side of this, if you do not act with your heart what will you have instead?

If that is more conflict, sadness, disappointment, less confidence and distrust in your abilities then don't go there!

What others think of us is none of our business as we cannot control their thoughts, people are just playing out their individual programs based on their history, past hurts and lessons learnt. They may care for you, and play on the side of caution, that is how they play life. Now the question is:

DO you play on the side of caution?

Help the school children in Darfur!

Lately people who have been receiving a complimentary session are asking how they can repay us; well it is a complimentary session after all. They get great value, and really benefit from that hour session. As coaches, we really hone in on the urgent matters and creating possible outcomes. We believe in giving as much value as possible and thus this raises a dilemma for us. The exchange of energy is not balanced, we give our services and resources to the client, and it is a one way energy transfer.

So we are delighted to offer an opportunity to reciprocate, by donating to our preferred charity UNHCR. We have signed a fundraising agreement with UNHCR and raise money on their behalf.

They are a dynamic organisation doing so much good for the 33 million refugees out there. They are pivotal in making a difference by providing a multitude of respite services and long term initiatives. One initiative in particular resonated with us, the Education Plus Program. The youth is our future and we at Click A Life Coach believe every child should have access to an education irrespective of where they live. Only through learning and exploring can children grow and expand their environment. You can now help us make a difference with your donation.

Every little bit counts; our aim for 2008 is to collect more than 10,000 AUD as we have set our sights on rehabilitating at least three classrooms. Every child has a right to an Education; through this program you will be one of the angels helping them achieve this wonderful goal.

If you normally get a coffee each morning, how about donating your coffee money for the week, ($3 x 5 = $15) and feel that you have really given a child the wonderful world of learning.

We are promoting this on the Click A Life Coach website and on our Blog. For any donations of 10 AUD and above, we publish your name, the amount and a link to your website* in our blog. For your donation, visit our UNHCR Donation page and click on the button “Make a Donation” at the top or bottom of the page.
If you would like us to publish your name and website, please leave a comment on this site or contact us here.

Please share this website with the online community by bookmarking it with your favourite bookmarking service and help us reaching our goal of raising 10,000 AUD by the end of 2008.

* your website is in alignment with our code of ethics thus no (adult only websites)

The 80/20 Rule (Part 2)

Thanks for coming back to read part 2 of the 80/20 rule. For those who haven’t read part one just click on the link The 80/20 rule (Part 1). I promised to give you a real life example in this post and tell you the reason why on first sight the equation looks more like 8000/20 or something like this. Well it has all to do with compound. Most of you would be familiar with compound interest. To explain what I mean here is what happens with one of our campaigns.

Case Study: Click A Life Coach Campaign

We currently run a Google Ads campaign for Career Coaching. What happens is people click on the Ad and come to our landing page. Out of 100 clicks we get roughly 22 people that put in their details. We are still tweaking the page to see what works best. You can see the 80/20 is almost spot on.

Do all of them end up being customers? Unfortunately not, there is another process to go through. You see we are giving away a free coaching session for everyone submitting their details. Now at this point we see that out of every 100 people that enter their details only about 35 go ahead with the free session. The others either loose interest, don’t leave a phone number or don’t reply to our email. You can see people at this stage have been pre-qualified and the ratio comes down. By now we have about 77 people out of 1000 that are still warm leads.

Still there are not paying customers yet. After their complimentary session, there are about 40% that convert into paying customers. The ratio here is 60/40 and got lower again, because we prequalified them once more. In the end we currently end up with roughly 30 paying clients per 1000 leads.

Why is this important to know?

Based on this information we can see that if we want 60 paying clients, we need to get 2000 leads through our website and increase the spent on the advertisement. It also gives us a gauge how much money to spend on marketing. We know in advance what our return on investment is.


Summarize

The 80/20 rule can be applied in different scenarios, keep in mind following points:

• 80/20 is a guideline only, the actual ratio may differ depending on the circumstances
  
• There might be several steps involved in your marketing campaign, each of them, each of them have their own ratios
  
• Test this in different markets and see which one is the most profitable for you
  
• Make sure you track the conversation rate and don’t turn a blind eye to it
  

Please let me know your own experiences and where else you think this can be applied to.

The 80/20 rule (Part 1)

Some of you would have heard of the 80/20 rule in life. This rule can be applied to your business, investments, blogs and other websites. I will tell you what this means for you and how to apply it correctly in your circumstances. In short the rule states that out of 100 people that you target in a marketing campaign, 20 will show some sort of interest.


Practical examples for the 80/20 rule

Blogging

This can be applied for many businesses, especially where you address a variety of people. Take for example a blog. Let’s say you get 100 visitors per day to your blog, the 80/20 rule means that out of the hundred visitors around 20 will stop at your blog and start reading your posts. That is 20% percent of the visitors.

Share Market

There a millions of people investing in the market, most of them are part-time or hobby investors. Many of them come onboard when the market goes up, without actually knowing much about investments strategies. Again you can apply the 80/20 rule, out of 100 people investing in the market, 20 know what they are doing and get make consistent profits in the market. The other 80 don’t spend time in educating themselves in the market.

Network Marketing

Many of us have been stung by this industry and I know many read until this point and then they stop saying: another blog about MLM. I know it is working but again you need to be aware of the rule which can be applied in two different ways. For once out of 100 MLM businesses in the market only about 20 are genuine businesses that have a good management team and good products.
Second to be successful in the business you need to understand the 80/20 rule, out of 100 prospects usually around 20 will show some interest.


Knowing this information is helpful when you plan your next marketing campaign. Keep in mind that there are deviations from this number. In my experience they depend on three factors:

• Industry or Area where you apply the rule
• Quality of service being offered
• Type of marketing campaign you are running, how well do you target the audience

Going back to blogging, if your blog is well designed and appealing to the eye, your ratio might be 70/30 or even better. For bad designed blogs the ratio might go up to 95/5. The same applies to where you promote your blog. If you promote the blog by visiting and commenting other blogs, which have a similar topic to yours, you ratio will come down. If you use sites like Entrecard, Blogexplosion or StumbleUpon, the ratio goes up.

Important is keep track of your campaign and fine-tune them to get better results.

I see already your comments, I don’t believe you, my ratio is more like 1000/1 or something. If that’s you wait until tomorrow and come back for Part 2 of this post. I will go more in detail about this and show you that can still apply the 80/20 rule there. I’ll also give you a practical example using one of our Google Ads campaigns.

Looking forward to read about your own experiences in the comments.

Now or Never

The other day I read this in an article "it is now or never!" what an ultimatum, I thought and then I reflected on this and realised that this was a CALL TO ACTION. Sometimes we need it to be blunt and to the point, otherwise we just pussy-foot around (as I like to say) and we procrastinate and put it off...

When we have call to action we need to tackle that with energy and determination, plus our happy smiling face this way we are in state and ready to tackle whatever is in front of us. We set guidelines or time limits so we know that it just needs to happen no matter what.

This changes your energy to having a flow, deciding and going for it. I had a new client just on Monday, she is looking at changing her career, so we discussed her interests and what she thought was realistic given her situation.

I sent her some links for research and today she emailed me to inform me that she has booked a taster course with the view to do a diploma down the track! WOW that is a definite NOW action and I am sure she is feeling more positive about her future and looking foward to the new learnings and insights.

Sometimes we just need to give ourselves some internal pressure to get on with it!

What is on your list that needs to be executed??

For me, its my study module, I know it must be done, so today I give myself a time limit, to be completed my September! No extensions or more excuses!

Spring is in the AIR

How wonderful, today is the first day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and I am already feeling like nesting! Perhaps that is a pregnancy thing, however I find myself more energetic when the weather is warmer and inviting.

Spring is the time to renew, to re-plant, to rejuvenate. So have a think about what this really means for you?

• Time to tidy your work office

• Spring clean your kitchen/home

• Dust off your intentions list from 9 months ago and revisit them

• Change something in your life

• Commit to a new job or relationship

• Nurture your garden and re-pot/plant seasonal vegies and fruit

• Really look in the mirror and decide that today is the DAY!

Whatever strikes a cord with you, remember it starts with YOU FIRST, 'be the change you want to see in the world '(said by M Gandhi)

And smile after all doors open to those expecting them too!