I like to think big about my goals.
So big in fact, that my goal for The Coaching Revolution is world domination!
Well, what I really mean by that is that my goal for The Coaching Revolution is that every single newly qualified coach understands that if they want a coaching business, they need to learn how to market their new professional service – for them to understand that a coaching qualification is simply not enough on its own.
I’d like them to come to The Coaching Revolution to learn those skills, of course, but as long as I’ve made them aware that they actually need marketing skills, I”ll consider my job done.
The ‘not a goal’ that I’m talking about is my book, A Coaching Business In A Book.
Writing A Book Is Challenging, But It Was My Goal!
When I set out to write my book, the first 35,000 words flowed from me onto the page. Over the years, I’ve learned how to write in the same way that I talk and so I wrote my book to be not only informative, but also chatty and friendly.
Once I got to 35,000 words, my flow slowed to a trickle. With the aid of the magnificent coach Sarah Gilligan, I scraped another 17,000 words from the inside of my head (think rubber spatula and a bowl of cake mix) and into the book.
Sarah (Gilligan) lives in Victoria, Australia and joined The Coaching Revolution as a mentee, thrived and grew her business and is now an Australian mentor for us.
Between us and the marvel that is the internet, we were to-ing and fro-ing for what felt like an eternity.
And then it was done.
I Didn’t Think Any Further!
What’s really odd in hindsight, is that once I’d published the book on the Kindle bookstore, I thought that I had finished the project.
It honestly never even crossed my mind that people might actually read it. Not just read it, but read it and then write lovely things about it in Amazon reviews! (Apart from one coach who thinks it’s rubbish and returned it and left a 2* review to let everyone know that she thought it was rubbish!). Just goes to show that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
The other thing that never crossed my mind is that the majority of the coaches who book conversations with me to see what us working together might look like would become a whole stream of people who had read my book.
It feels very strange indeed to know that someone has read this thing that I strived over for hours. It almost feels like they have been walking around in my head. It’s so weird.
International Best Seller!
What I had absolutely never even considered was that this work of mine would go on to become a best seller. In fact, a number one best seller in 2 different categories on the Kindle store in the UK and in the top ten elsewhere in the world!
Gobsmacked doesn’t come close to describing how I feel.
The best thing about this status is that it is in ‘real’ categories. What I mean by that is that this number one status isn’t in some random category in which there are very few other books, it’s number one in Direct Marketing and Marketing and Sales.
To put this into perspective, the number two book in the Direct Marketing category is Seth Godin’s This Is Marketing.
Seth bloomin’ Godin!
When Is A Goal Not A Goal?
When it’s something that you achieved by accident. Something that seemed so unattainable that you never, not even for a single moment, considered setting it as a goal. I mean… Seth Godin!
Feedback
An even more wonderful and equally unexpected bonus from this uptick in sales is that people have been hopping into my inbox, to tell me just how much they are loving my book. That I’m describing them, and their journey to date to a T.
I cannot express just how wonderful that makes me feel!
2020 may have been a most peculiar year, but it has ended on a high for me!
(You’ll find my book here – this is the UK link. If you want the link for a different country, search A Coaching Business In A Book)