Life is like a puzzle in many ways, and on our path as coaches we all have just found so many more gems pieces to our puzzles and learnings we otherwise may not have been able to gather about us and our purpose, what an amazing gift. I'd like to express my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to each of you for your support.
Id like to start with acknowledgement and special thanks to our speakers at the Lismore Rebuilding Northern Rivers event on Wednesday 10th June 09 Phil Tooth for his delivery of Emotional recovery from setback and to Michael Andjelkovic for his delivery of Success - Defining Moments and with your permission, I'd like to briefly acknowledge myself for convening and emceeing the event and for my delivery of Sales & Marketing using IT & the Internet
I'd also like to express our deepest gratitude to Wayne Jeskie for his valued support and insights of our speakers during and after the event and, to Karyne Ang for her efforts and enthusiasm. For those of you not already aware Karyne fell from her horse last Saturday, landed in hospital overnight for observation, and unfortunately was not able to attend the event as planned, Karyne's presence was missed by all. Thankfully, Karyne is fine, just a little soar from her fall and sorry for not being able to attend our event. And, to all you coaches for offering your support in phone and webinar coaching, what an inspiration you all are.
So how was the event?
An excellent learning experience
There were fewer 'local' attendees than we had hoped for and that's okay, because those who were in attendance benefited greatly from the experience and, the appreciation of the listeners was felt be all, especially those delivering their pearls of widom.
At this point, I would like to thank
Cathy Ward from the Northern Star, for her effort in getting our event advertised in the Northern Star and Richmond River Express over 3 days Saturday 6th, Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th June. Cathy, your acknowledgement of our effort and intentions is greatly appreciated. I'd also like to thank
Karen Whiteford and staff at The Ramada Hotel Ballina http://www.ramadaballina.com.au/ for their sponsorship of accommodation for the speakers, and to
my many clients for their contribution in advertising the event in their shopfront. And finally, to
Donna at the Lismore Workers Club for allowing us to use the function room. And for anyone else out there that did advertise on our behalf please know that your efforts are appreciated and we do thank you so much for your support.
Guys, good for us for taking the risk, for putting it on the line, for not knowing what the outcome would be and doing it anyhow, what a huge effort. The attendance rate of 'locals'was very low thats true, and some might view the event as a dud, a failure, but those of us in the giving world, in the coaching world know that there is no such thing as failure, just opportunities to learn from our experiences. So, I'd like to confirm that from our point of view, it was an excellent learning experience. There are a few questions we can ask ourselves.
- What can/did we learn from it?
- How could we have created better awareness and local support for the event
- What are the opportunites here that when taken up, will move us closer to our own goals of supporting others?
Speakers and others at the event have briefly discussed some learnings and welcome your input, insights, shared experiences. You can do this by commenting on this blog and/or you can join us on another webinar next Tuesday evening 16th June 09 at 7:00pm. I will send the invite to your email address later or, you can email me on
evelyn@realfocus.com.au in case I miss you and you'd like to join us.
I think you'll agree its interesting to see that the intention and effort put in by some was huge, and on the other hand, the promotion of the event may have been better handled. We could play the 'blame game' but what good would that do us. Gaining more sponsorship perhaps would have created more awareness through paid advertising in the local print media and radio and gaining more trust of the local MP's and clergy would also have helped us get to the larger audience, those who could have benefited so much from the speakers and the networking available at the event... at the end of the day, there are so many learnings for us to brainstorm and take on board if we choose. Learnings that when recognised and applied can help us all with our own buisnesses. Would you like to do that?
- How do we create awareness to a market that is "looking for" what we have to "offer"?
- Who are we/should we be target marketing to?
- What are their needs i.e. What do they want (rather than what we think they want)
- How do we find them (our specific market)?
- How do we do it better, more cost effectively, invest wisely?
- How do we gain publicity in the right places?
- What could our current contact base, clients, prospects do for our referral based business?
- How can we advertise, spread the word, spread the gift of knowledge and imagination?
- What strategic referral partnerships/alliances can we create?
If you would like to participate in brainstorming and supportuing each other in answering some of these questions please let me know your availability.
As mentioned earlier, our speakers will be getting together at another webinar to share our experience and to take it up another notch. I'd like to recommend we continue with offering our webinars for a fee of $30 (rather than free) and share the profits. I think one of the learnings we should take on from this experience is, it re-affirms yet again that when something is FREE it can be perceived as having NO worthiness. Even if our webinars initially are being joined by fellow coaches only at no charge, you can spread the word to your clients and offer it to them at your discretion, that is totally okay because the webinars are being recorded and you can use them for advertising on your website or on uTube if you like.
The event at Lismore was professionally recorded, live. We will be utilising this for maximum benefit. We did deliver a Community Service event in Lismore. We did deliver lots of ideas, experiences and strategies to those in the audience. We will edit this recording and add it to our Resumes. It all adds up to experience and contribution of giving to others.
Our purpose was to give "the gift of healing, of higher intention, of energy and of imagination".
The thing is, it can only be when taken up by those who are aware of it and for those who wish to take it on for themselves. Our minds are like parachutes - they will only work when open. People can get bitter, or better. Its a choice.
There will always be something new to discover and learn. The pieces of the puzzle may come together in new unexpected ways. The puzzle may keep changing and expanding. But if we keep appreciating each piece of the puzzle, each moment when the pieces fit together and more of the picture or shape is revealed, life will continue to expand beyond our wildest expectations.
Your comments, insights and shared experiences are most welcome.
Evelyn Olivares - Real Focus
