Author: gdkohn

Genevieve Kohn is a life coach, business coach and energy healer. Her author page can be found at amazon.com/author/genevievekohn .

Do You REALLY Have Clients?

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What Happens When We Say We Have Clients?

Do we REALLY have clients?

This is what I mean: Are you working for pay, or are you working for free? Or for next to nothing?

Are you going into an agreement or some kind of deal?

Are you going into working with someone, and is the client paying you?

Want to grow your coaching business? Click here for your 30-minute Get Acquainted Call! https://bit.ly/gksession

Are you going into a agreement or some kind of deal or agreement?

Are you going into working with someone, and is the client paying you?

There are exceptions to this.

For example, you have agreed to barter. For example, you have agreed to give some free coaching in exchange for having someone build your website.

So what you have in that case is a free exchange; no money is involved.
What I have been taught, and what I’ve actually come to believe from experience, is that it’s very hard to say you have a business without getting paid.

What is business?

It’s an exchange where you provide a service or product in exchange for money. So if you’re working without getting paid, you really have more of a hobby than a business.

I don’t know about you but I’m not working all these hours for just a hobby. So, the important thing here is that you adjust your thinking.

Want a business? Act like you have one.

If you’re in business, act like you’re in business. I get paid first, and then I provide services, or a product. For example, let’s say you go to the grocery store. You’re not expecting to get all these groceries and to be able to leave the store without paying, right?

It’s the same with being in business. You need to get paid.

And there is nothing wrong with that! In this society, we’ve been conditioned that “money is the root of all evil”. I’m here to tell you that it most certainly is not.

Money is how you are in business for yourself and to help others. This way you’ll have the resources to help the people that you’re working with.

She thought she had a business…

I had a client who I’ll call Masie. She had all these clients that she was working with, but she wasn’t making any money.

Masie basically came to me and said, “I’m sorry I can’t pay you right now, because I don’t have any money.”

My response to her was, “Well, you have clients, don’t you?”

Masie said, “Yeah I do.”

Upon delving a little deeper, I discovered that she had several clients that she was working with, but they hadn’t paid her.

That’s NOT a business.

That is a hobby. Even if you were running a nonprofit organization, you would still have to get paid. Even if you didn’t charge a client in a non-profit, the funds needed to run your business would have to come from from somewhere. Every business needs funds to operate.

A Real Business

So if you are having all these clients and they’re not paying you: You might want to change that.

I’ve occasionally slipped up on this myself, where I end up working for somebody and wondering, “Where’s my payment?”

I really need to repeatedly set my own boundaries around this. So there’s an order of operations, so to speak, that you can follow.

I try to consistently follow this order of operations, because my business works better when I do follow these things.

A simple way to do business

First, I have a call with a prospect. At that point, that person is merely a prospect, not a client because they haven’t remitted payment to me yet.

We get on Zoom and among other things:

We go over the details of how we’re going to be working together, and I draft a client agreement, also referred to as a client contract.

Then they sign that contract and they pay me.

There are a number of ways you can receive payment. My business is all online so I have PayPal, Venmo and Stripe. It’s not necessary to have all of these; however, I’ve found that it helps my business run more smoothly.

Then the client signs the agreement. Sometimes it’s done the other way around, where they remit payment first and then sign the client ageement.

For the purposes of my business, it doesn’t matter. Once she or he has remitted payment, she or he is a client. And then I get to the work that we had discussed.

Do you see the difference here?

Making a shift

If you are working for someone for free: that really needs to be shifted. That leads to a pattern that is not sustainable.

We deserve to be paid. We are professionals.

Very often, a back and forth can occur in the mind, though, can’t it?

“Who are you to charge for your services, you’re not good enough for that. You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Well, guess what? If you are providing these services or a product: Why would you offer something that you don’t know how to deliver?

Now, if you want to work on this, it’s one of the things I’d love to work on with you.

One of the services that I provide is business coaching. If you feel that this is your problem that you have clients, yet they’re not paying you, let’s see if we’d be a good fit to work together.

Go to http://bit.ly/gksession to schedule a 30-minute Zoom with me to see how I can help you.

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Going Live and Messing Up Is Better Than Nothing

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What Happens Then?

What happens when–not if–you mess up while going live? I’ve got a lot of experience with this. For a long time, I didn’t want to go live on Facebook, because I was so afraid that things wouldn’t be perfect. In fact, when I started doing FB Live, I actually DID mess up.

Want to grow your coaching business? Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

And I’ve messed up many times. In fact, I messed up yesterday in my Facebook group, Social Media Marketing for Coaches. (By the way, if you’re a health, life, spiritual or leadership coach, I invite you to join us at https://facebook.com/groups/SMmarketing4coaches).

Perfection Paralysis Is Worse Than Messing Up

For a long time, I didn’t want to post or one did not want to go live on Facebook, because I was so afraid that things wouldn’t go perfectly. A demonstration for my group that would help with marketing on social media didn’t quite go as planned. I had wanted to show all the posts that I had made on having systems to market your business. The important thing was to show up! If your audience doesn’t see you, how can they grow to know, like or trust you?

A Facebook Live That Wasn’t Perfect

I had about 10 posts, since last year, on systems. Yet for some reason, Facebook wasn’t showing them all. Facebook was only showing three or four of them. So there really wasn’t much point to doing this whole Facebook Live on systems. There wasn’t enough information for my group members to learn from. And I was on actually live on Facebook when I discovered this!

Being More Prepared Will Help…

One thing I want to do next time is prepare better. This will cut down on the number of mistakes that can be made while going live. However, very often a lot of us business owners are so afraid that we’re going to mess up. There’s this fear that nobody is  going to end up wanting to work with us.

Yet I think if we are honest, it actually will help our businesses, because I am not going to pretend that I’m perfect. I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers, even if I may be considered an expert in certain areas.

You Are An Expert

Even for me to say that that I’m an expert makes me a bit uncomfortable, to tell the truth. However, compared to somebody who doesn’t know anything about digital marketing to grow their business, I may be seen as an expert. It will be the same for you: if you have more knowledge than the people you serve, you’re the expert!

What’s A Marketing Calendar?

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And How Will A Marketing Calendar Help?

(Video at the bottom of this page was recorded for Facebook group, Social Media Marketing for Coaches: https://facebook.com/groups/smmarketing4coaches)

Having an online marketing calendar is very important. In fact, I’d even say it’s a vital part of your marketing. It’s how you’ll know what to post and when to post it on social media or in your blog.

Want to grow your coaching business? Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

There are two ways to use a marketing calendar:

  1. Pre-Scheduling

You can have your marketing pre-scheduled and ready to go out. I personally like to “set it and forget it”. Some say that there may not be as much engagement if you pre schedule. I’m not really finding that it’s a big issue for me though. With just a little planning, I’ve got something pre-scheduled for each day of the week. Therefore, there’s no need to think about it every day!

2. Write and Send Your Social Media Posts Immediately
If you prefer, you can instead write your social media posts (or blog posts) and send them out right away. It’s really up to you and how you prefer to work.


For example, I have my own schedule of post topics each day with a hashtag, like #MarketingMonday or #TalkAboutItTuesday. You can actually Google this under social media posts for days of the week. Depending on what kind of business you have, you can use different hashtags.


Hashtags are a way you can look up a particular topic on social media.
Let’s say you want to use something like #MarketingMonday, like I use in my business. I also use the following hashtags:

#TalkAboutItTuesday, #WisdomWednesday, #ThankfulThursday, #FridayFun, #SocialSaturday, and #SundayFunday. I tend to post these day-of-the-week posts in the morning. A good link to research what hashtags could work for your business is https://blog.hootsuite.com/daily-hashtags/.

More About Pre-Scheduling

To pre-schedule, I like sendible.com. Besides morning posts, I sometimes also post in the afternoon–this way I am posting at least once or twice per day. Two other good apps that are very inexpensive are hootsuite.com and buffer.com. There are others as well.


To create my own designs for my morning posts, I use canva.com. It’s a very user-friendly way to create your own original designs, or you can choose from many premade designs to use with your posts.

To go back to Sendible, one reason why I like it is that there are content suggestions if you want to use an article that someone else has created for your afternoon post. These articles on Sendible are free to share, and they have very useful content that are more likely of interest to your online followers. For example, I can enter and search a topic like online marketing to find articles to share in the afternoon.

As I mentioned earlier, what’s great about online marketing is that it can be planned or scheduled. If you haven’t seen my earlier video on using Google Calendar to schedule things throughout your day, you can go to http://www.innerpowermedia.com/organizing-your-life-and-business-with-google-calendar/.


With online marketing, the most important thing is planning it. When you plan your posts is really up to you. Some will say that it’s best to optimize for the times during the day when your audience is likely to be on. If you don’t know when those are yet, try some common times like 9am, 12pm and 5pm. You can experiment with this, since you may not know until you actually try this out.


If by this point in your reading, you’re at the point in your thinking where you don’t want to do any of the marketing your business needs to grow, schedule a 20-minute Get Acquainted Call to see how I can help you: http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen.

As you can see, a marketing calendar will take the uncertainty and worry right out of your online marketing!

What Can We Do When We’re Frustrated At Work?

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Let’s talk about what happens during our workday. As business owners, we know it’s going to happen: we’re going to get frustrated at work. I experienced this a bit yesterday when I had this tech issue. There were a couple of apps on my laptop that weren’t working very well, and my computer was getting really slow too.

I kept thinking to myself, “Ok, I’ve got clients that are waiting for me to to do some work for them!” It was getting really frustrating. So I had to take a deep breath. (Sounds really corny, but it works.)

Health and spiritual coaches: Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

So what CAN we do when we’re frustrated at work?

I personally took a deep breath, put my feet flat on the floor, did some more deep breathing, and centered myself. There were even a couple of times during all these tech issues of the last few days where I’ve had to just move away from my laptop for a while and take a break.

I get tempted to just keep going at work, no matter what. And when that happens, my mood gets worse and worse. So I’m so grateful that I was able to take that time to center myself. Hopefully I’ll remember it more quickly next time!

Being in business for ourselves doesn’t mean that everything’s going to go perfectly. There are a lot of benefits to being in business for oneself. We have autonomy. Yet there’s so much to do.

Life is like that: Whether we’re working or not, frustrating things come up. So taking a deep breath, centering, and prioritizing can be so helpful.

After I centered myself, I looked at my calendar. I thought, “What is absolute-top priority what needs to get done today? What can wait till tomorrow?”
There are projects sometimes they can wait till next week, next month, and so on. I tend to be very overwhelmed. There are frustrations that come up during the day, but we don’t have to let them control us. It’s the same thing with really any emotion that we feel that is a bit too overpowering or too overwhelming.

What do you do when you are getting frustrated during the day?

What Are the 5 Habits of Highly Effective Online Marketers?

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In this vlog post, you will discover the 5 habits of highly effective online marketers. This way, you will learn to be one! If you’re a health, spiritual, life or business coach, you may be struggling with being effective in your marketing. Or you may be struggling with balancing the many hats you need to wear as a business owner. (And yes, one does need to market for business growth!)

Coaches: Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen


Especially with COVID-19, there are a lot more of us working from home these days. I’ve been working from home for about the past 10 years. So I have the experience needed to help my clients. I also have many, many failures to show for it!


Yet I also have success. So, and I talk about all that stuff in my book, “Five Habits of Highly Effective Online Marketers: Changing Your Coaching Business from Unknown to In-Demand”. It’s a short book; it’s only about 50 pages long. In the book, I outline what needs to happen for most businesses to succeed online–especially if you’re a coach.

So what are the 5 habits of highly effective online marketers, anyway?

The first chapter is called, “You’ve Got to Have a Game Plan”. When you’re doing anything that requires some kind of productivity, you need to have a strategy. This is also sometimes referred to as a having a game plan.


The second chapter is about how to grow your business on social media. Social media is something that you need to do if you are growing a business online. Now, if you’re not doing it, don’t beat yourself up. There’s always chance for you to start.

The third chapter talks about how your website is more than just your online business card. There are some people that
are able to grow their businesses without a website–as long as they have some kind of social media presence. However, a website is the central location where folks can find out about you, and about how you can help them.


The fourth chapter will show you why web content matters. What you put on the web makes a difference. In a way, that’s sort of common sense. Yet there’s some detail with which I go into it that’s very beneficial.

The fifth and final chapter is about how to activate your game plan. There are tools and tips you’ll need to set your game plan in motion.

How You Can Get the Book


My book is currently on Kindle for $0.99 US. You can also get the paperback delivered for only $3.99 US. I’ve had prospective clients AND actual clients who just didn’t know how to get from where they are to where they want to be. This book is for all of you who want the same.

Get the book here:

http://bit.ly/5HabitsInDemand

So if you have the kind of business that I just described, please feel free to mention that in the comments below. Marketing your business online doesn’t need to be complicated. You most likely just need someone like me to show you how!

Go to this site’s home page for more information on how I can help you! https://innerpowermedia.com)

The Beauty of Our Dreams

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Do you believe in the beauty of your dreams?

Believing in the beauty of our dreams in the first step to manifestation. In other words, when we believe in the beauty of our dreams, we are much more likely to have the motivation to make them come true. Also, not only does the future belong to those of us who do this. The present belongs to us too!

Health and spiritual coaches: Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

For example, I like to blog. However, it’s not necessarily a dream whose beauty I believe in. (Not yet, anyway.) It doesn’t quite capture my heart like working with clients or other things I do in my business. It’s not enough for me to just say, “I have this dream of blogging at least once a week.” So I only blog occasionally at this point.

Now, this is not a judgment. It’s just an observation. When we really believe in the beauty of our dreams, we see their inherent value. We have faith that we can create that which we desire. We see how rewarding our lives will be when we believe in our dreams enough to make them a reality.

Do you believe in your dreams enough to make them a reality? Try journaling about this. List the reasons why you do or don’t believe.

Journaling is so powerful; it can even be healing and clarifying. Dreams often begin to take shape while journaling.

I’m so glad I found this design that I created about three years ago. The reason why I love it is because of the real truth behind this quote. (OK, two reasons: There are also pretty colors and sparkly things.) ✨💖✨

Our dreams are within us for a reason. They are there to bring us what we want and deserve. So don’t discount your dreams, nurture them! Then take action to make them a reality.

Who’s Your Avatar?

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What is an avatar anyway? Find out why it matters.

Online marketing may seem to the inexperienced person like it’s complicated, but it really isn’t. The most important thing to start out with is knowing who your avatar is.

When you’re marketing, you have to know who you’re marketing to. Writing a social-media post, website or newsletter to anyone and everyone guarantees only one thing: You won’t reach anyone.

Health and spiritual coaches: Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

Online marketing has to be much more focused. If your target audience sees that you’re trying to help everyone, they won’t see themselves in your message. Your marketing will be unconvincing, and as a result, not effective.

To reach the people you want to work with, you need to focus your marketing with an avatar. Your avatar (or buyer persona) is someone with whom you are currently working, or someone who you are imagining, who is your ideal client.

You can speak to your avatar via:

  • Newsletter Emails
  • Social Media Posts
  • Going live on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
  • Website Pages

Have you ever had a client who you just loved working with? If so, try to list everything you loved about working with this client.

Or if you’re starting out with your business: Take a few minutes to get comfortable, close your eyes and picture working with a someone who makes you so glad you’re in business.

Either way, what is it that makes you love working with this person? Write down all the attributes of the client and how you feel when working with her or him. This is your avatar.

Once you have that person in your mind, imagine that with each piece of marketing you do, your goal is to reach her or him. You’ll be amazed at how effective your marketing becomes. And at how much easier it is to create the right wording to attract more of your ideal clients!

March is Reach Your Audience Month

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I’m happy to announce that this blog will start having a monthly theme so you can get specific, targeted information about marketing your business online. March is Reach Your Audience Month, so you can learn more about marketing to your ideal clients!

Health and spiritual coaches: Click here for your 20-minute Get Acquainted Call! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

The first thing to know when attempting to reach your audience is that your message needs to be specific and targeted, especially . One effective messaging tool is the elevator pitch, or an elevator speech. You may have heard the term.  It’s what you can say when people ask you, “What do you do?”

The idea is that you need to describe what you do in the time that it takes for an elevator ride. I like this term because it fits into our busy world. There usually isn’t much time to explain what we do effectively, so being able to sum it up quickly make sense.

A good elevator pitch should have these parts:

  1. An accurate description of the services your business provides
  2. Something about your business that makes it unique compared to others in your line of work. This way, you are more likely to differentiate yourself, and to connect with someone who resonates with what you do.
  3. You should end your elevator pitch with: “Would you like to know more?”

Here’s an example of my elevator pitch:

“My business helps health and spiritual coaches grow their businesses by providing social media management, website building and web copywriting.

What separates my service from others in my field is that I work closely with these coaches to find and attract their target audience in a way that truly aligns with who they are and because of this, they save time and effort in reaching their business goals with personalized business coaching, as well as having the “techy stuff” done for them.

Would you like to know more?”

This can take a bit of practice to memorize, so make sure you do that. Fortunately, if you work from home or you’re mainly online, you can always have your elevator pitch written our on your desk or your phone until you get the hang of it.

If the person replies, “Yes!” or something similar: Depending on whether you are talking with someone in-person or not, you can give her or him your business card or your website. Make sure that when you do either, that you make an appointment to talk further.

The goal here should be getting on the phone, or into an online meeting. Then you can find out more about what the prospective client’s needs are and how you can help. Here’s a really important point: Make sure you either schedule a time to talk more right there, or follow up with the person as soon as possible to schedule that time.

The longer you wait to schedule a time, the more likely it will be that the prospect either will forget about your conversation or be put off because you tool too long to reach out. The more you are consistent with this, the better results you will get.

This is often the best way to generate interest. It is quick, easy and costs nothing. Yet it can be the beginning of marketing to your ideal clients. This can lead to great things for you and your business!

Feel resistance marketing online?

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Resistance happens. It doesn't have to lead to failure.

There can be an number of reasons why one can feel resistance when marketing online. It is often challenging—and confusing. When one is running an online business, there are quite a few things that need to be considered and implemented. No wonder we entrepreneurs often feel so much resistance!

If a business owner has no experience or training, it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed about marketing online for business growth. It’s like going hiking in the woods on a complicated trail with no guide to lead the way: we feel totally lost!

I’ve spoken to many health and spiritual coaches who don’t even know where to start, let alone form an online marketing plan. So fear of failure often sets in before they even start.

There’s also fear of success. If we’re “too successful”, might we be more vulnerable online or financially? And what if we get so busy that we end up being completely stressed out?

Often it just seems easier to leave online marketing on the back burner. But an online business is going nowhere unless we have an online marketing plan—and implementation.

Health and spiritual coaches: Get your FREE 20-minute Strategy Session here! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

Resistance is natural. Having fear is natural. Take a moment to lean into those fears. But the worst thing to do is to let the fear stop us!

Let’s turn this around. Ask yourself:

What if I…

Succeed?

Not only with my business, but with my self-care…so I’m not overworked or stressed out.

What if I make enough money to hire a VA…and then even more team members?

See what i just did there? Rather than imagine the worst-case scenario, how about imagining the BEST-case scenario?

In a recent blog post, (http://www.innerpowermedia.com/whats-your-business-vision-for-2020/) I included a video where I had viewers imagine their businesses as thriving. Click on the above link if you’d like to see it.

As I share in the video, I tried to have a successful online business for YEARS. What helped me turn things around? Positive visualization, like I just described above, and getting help. Doing things all alone did NOT work.

Taking action to turn things around felt so empowering.

If you’re a business owner, you are in business for yourself. So be GOOD to yourself. Work smarter, not harder. See what that can do for your business…and for you!

Online Marketing Is Manageable

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Focus + planning= online marketing success

Yesterday morning I was speaking to my husband about my upcoming workday, telling him that I had a lot of work to do. There can be a lot of plates to spin while working on my business, where I help health and spiritual coaches with online marketing. I also had a personal appointment that would probably take over two hours. “But it’s all manageable,” I told him. “I just have to be really focused.”

So how COULD I do everything I needed to do within that time?

For one thing, I had to eliminate distractions. Mind you, I am not the world’s greatest planner or organizer. However, I can do well when I do the following:

Health and spiritual coaches: Get your FREE 20-minute Strategy Session here! http://bit.ly/schedulewithgen

  1. Stick to the plans I have laid out in my calendar. My trusty Google Calendar, which I give a tutorial about in another blog post (http://www.innerpowermedia.com/organizing-your-life-and-business-with-google-calendar/). My schedule is all set for the next day by the time I finish work in the evening. I don’t make same-day appointments for work. This way there are no surprises.
  2. Avoid downers like the news, especially while working. (May be easier if working outside the home) 😉
  3. Avoid those bright, shiny objects. This was really tricky for me—for years. I discovered that all they really did was take me away from being productive in my business. (Especially in the world of online marketing: there is so much to learn, see and do!)
  4. Get a good night’s sleep. It is nearly impossible for me to stay focused on anything for more than 2 seconds if I am too tired.

After all, what good is trying to create the next blog post or social media campaign without focus and planning?

Have you had success with online marketing? Any questions about it? Let us know in the comments!