First, a little word about group coaching. Group coaching is a fantastic way to have access to coaching in a safe and nurturing group environment.  It is also an affordable way to get coaching and still use that group synergy to get you to your success.

Group coaching allows for individual personal coaching, meaning you will have as much time as anyone else and will be with like-minded people sharing the same goal.   I could go on forever about the benefits of group coaching but the best way to get a sense for it is to join us.

Here are some ideas to see if you would be interested and I would welcome suggestions to see if we could turn into a group coaching situation:

Career Transition

Healthy Relationships and Personal Boundaries

Combating Addiction

Sales Team Dynamics

Healthy Male Sexuality for a New Century

Personal Happiness

Life Balance

Anything else you would be interested?

The pilot group coach rates will be $75 a month.  When we have 7 to 9 people ready to go, we will start.  After the pilot group has concluded a month or two later, you will be able to continue at a discounted rate to be announced.

What’s the big deal?  How often do you have time to spend by yourself, with yourself on yourself?  Rarely, I assume as most of us do.  This was the perfect time to do what I preach, take care of number one.  And taking care of myself, I did.

I spent the day pretty much watching the same trees, hearing the wind run through the valley ruffling the leaves, seeing birds and bugs come in and out of my visual field.  As I was praying/meditating, things started to happen.  Almost as if an instant answer was unfolding in front of me, I asked what I was here to do on this Earth.  No sooner had I asked popped a knee high Fox.  He was calm, looked intently everywhere, calculating his every move.  He saw me, determined I was no danger to him and passed by.

Days like these, spent with yourself for yourself are like months of on and off introspection.  It was wonderful and I can only hope you can spend a day to yourself, talking to life, watching trees grow.

What is so special about this book?  This book goes right into the heart of the matter that our educational system trains everyone for information management jobs.  What Crawford has done in his book was to show that many inventions do not come from scientists working in labs but astute artisans and craftmen needing to improve their process.  Case in point, the steam engine.  At the time, scientists were engrossed into what is now a dead en theory, caloric value of heat.  The steam engine was invented by craftmen.  The book shows many more inventions.  Also this book takes a stab at the misconception that crafts and artisanal work is low brow.

About the author, displeased and disillusioned with his Think Tank job, he goes on to say he actually used his brains more when he had his classic motorcycle job.

The book is brilliant and a worthy read for those of you frustrated parents and disillusioned cubicle workers.  The book reminds us of the importance of hand eye coordination achieving palpable results at the end of the day creating wonderful brain reactions.

Thumbs up!

For more information, you can check out reviews at Amazon.

I just got off the phone with a lovely lady who approached me to have my articles published.  By the middle of the phone call, the conversation turned into a pitch.  It was let down, no matter how good the service might be.

Many marketers and advertisers have become so desperate they approach you with flattery and bait.  Instead of you receiving compensation for your work, you end up having to pay for free advertising.  It just isn’t the best way to reach out to potential clients.  It’s a turn off and leaves you feeling let down… again.

So what can a smart marketer do?  Be forward, announce it like it is.  Don’t be afraid to say you have a product and would like to know if your potential client could be interested.  By reaching out this way, you not only treat them respectfully and in a mature way, but you don’t risk leaving them feeling like it was yet another disguised pitch call.

Ask the potential client if they are in a position or thinking about advertising.  Ask what have their experience been like.  In other words, don’t just talk and pitch, ask how you can be of service… it goes a long way.

In the end, what we are witnessing is a reluctant sales force to come to terms with the mess they help create in the first place.  By approaching potential clients with detours, they are not only wasting their time and the said potential clients but also perpetuating yesterday’s “business as usual”, have to sell no matter system.  It just doesn’t work anymore.

My generation now looks for actions, not words.

Attaining that state in a session is not that difficult if you remember to use wisely your left brain and let your right brain make the final decision.  Masterful coaches understand how to use enough of their physical senses, sight, hearing and rational deduction by a carefully mixing intuition.  That makes those sessions free flowing where the client is in charge leaving only the coach to ask questions based on listening and intuition…

Tell-tell signs to look for. A serious coach always has a coach.  This might sound a little strange but a good coach has to have a coach also.  Why?  Simply enough, a coach needs to have another professional in order to bounce ideas off with, think, things through and just raise awareness around issues as only a third party person can do.

So what questions do you need to ask a coach to find out if they are right for you? It’s not always easy to find the right coach but asking the right questions will shed enough light to make up your mind.  After all, you should not only feel comfortable with your coach, she or he should also have been professionally trained.

Training, what, where, when and how? This should be you very first round of questions.  Ask your potential coach if they have been professionally trained, where and what they concentrated on.  This will tell you if your coach has active methods to help you on your journey.  Ask them where they were trained in order to gauge the seriousness of the school.  Find out what they are doing to keep up to date.

These simple first set of questions should already give you a profile as to how serious this coach is.  Next, ask them about their coach.

Mark was Robert Monroe’s sound engineer for decades and decided to start his own venture.  His products are very interesting in the sense that he builds on his experience with the Monroe Institute but adds how own alchemy in the mix.  I particularly enjoyed listening to his Samadhi aimed at keeping lid on the monkey mind.  For those unaware of the term, monkey mind is what happens to almost everyone, that incessant chatter.

Mark takes a shot at one of the fundamental pillar of success, training the mind to be quiet, to observe and be a working tool for who you are.  I can only highly recommend his work in conjunction with the Hemi-Sync products from the Monroe Institute.

An Ethnographer does consumer insight research in order to understand what the consumer wants and does not want.  It goes even as far as finding why potential clients whisk by businesses’ doors.

Coaching helps business owners developing greater awareness around who they are, why they started their business which leads to understanding why they do the things they do and how they deliver them.

Then it dawned on us that our services were actually complementary.  So we decided to unite and offer Ethnographic-Coaching packages.  Julie does the ethnography research and I coach businesses around her findings with fundamental questions such as: “Now that you know this, how aligned are you with your goals?” or “How close is this form home to you?”, etc.

The best part is that we have found a way to make it financially affordable for smaller businesses without cutting back on quality.  How?  With our very low overhead, we do not need to start our services at $100,000, as is the case normally and can go much below.  Why?  Because we are not only the Chairman, CEO and officers of our companies but every steps all the way down to the janitors.  We do everything and do not require a salary for someone running photocopies, as is the case with bigger organizations.  We do it all and we are passionate about it.

If the gateway Experience CD set I have been working on has brought more easily and readily to higher states of consciousness, I find that I can stil reach these states even in normal life.  In other words, I was afraid they would be a crutch, but I can actually take back into my regular conscious life the benefits.

What dies this mean concretely?  I can focus better than I ever had.  I am more present.  Whenever I feel, I can sink into any of those higher states of consciousness and bring about the desired results I have been working on.

Next I’ll talk about what the CDs exercises are about.