Tonight I decided to dop by StartUps.com to see if there were any questions I could answer, when I was pleasantly surprised to find a former coaching client sharing his experience working with me.

I am undergoing a similar transformation, moving from a 100% consulting biz to 100% product sales biz. I knew I hated consulting, but wasn't sure what the next step was or how to get out of it. I give you kudos for the 20% of your time you already put into the product business.

I worked with a professional business coach for about 18 months, and would strongly recommend it. The trick is to find one, though. It is not as easy as it may sound.

I spoke to a lot of "life coaches" that seem to think if you balance your life, then your work will be better. That is all fine and dandy, but if I want to brainstorm about marketing strategies, create personas, talk about organizing the books, or doing market research could they help me? I always got the impression that they could not.

A life coach with no business experience is not a business coach; even if they pitch themselves as on.

I spoke to a business coach who was part of some business coach/mentor organization. He had a background as a sales guy with a big pharmaceutical company. I didn't hire him because I couldn't rationalize how his experiences in a big company would relate to mine as owner of a single person business trying to change everything we do and grow beyond that.

I spoke to a business coach who told me there was no way to start a successful business in an industry that was not growing and I shouldn't even try. I was shocked at such negativity during our first conversation. I believed, and still believe, that if you can provide a unique offering that customers want you can build a successful business even if you aren't in a growing industry. I didn't hire him either.

Through the recommendation of a colleague, I eventually hired Greg fromhttp://www.smallbusinesstransitions.com/ . He is a business coach for over 20 years that had actually built up and sold a tech related business. He was tech savy and we worked over the Internet using tools like Skype and Comapping.com.

I recommend finding a business coach; ignore the life coaches you run into along the way. And, pay for it. You want a professional to help you along the way. It is like having a partner who isn't a partner.

The original question was... "I need help - mentor or life coach" Here is my answer:

In my experience having a life coach is only as good as you are clear. Someone said to me once, "You can get anything you want, first, you need to know what you want."

Thanks @reboog711 for the endorsement! I just decided to stop by and check out what's > going on and decided this looked like a great thread to contribute to and was pleased to see you here. I enjoyed working with you!

The longer I am in business the more I realize (daily) that entrepreneurship is a "state of consciousness". Specifically, it's our habits that we just do automatically that creates our realities both in business and our personal lives. To the degree that we are conscious of what we are doing (or not doing) that shapes our business and the results we witness.

My Perspective On Coaching

In my experience, mentoring and coaching are significantly different. Each has it's place and I think entrepreneurs need both a coach and a mentor.

In my experience, coaching has a lot of benefits and it also has it's challenges. Benefits are a skilled 'partner' to share and help with your vision. Challenges for a coach is to remain detached - to be willing to let your client struggle - to know when to step in and provide the right kind of support. The reason this is so important is when a coach steps in too soon - because they feel uncomfortable or become impatient with you they end up hi-jacking your learning and self-esteem you would acquire as a result of solving your own problems.

Admittedly, it's a fine line and can only be achieved with the active participation of the coach and client.

As @Reboog711 mentioned, I have been providing business coaching for 20+ years. recently, I stopped coaching because everyone seems to be a coach these days. More important, I prefer to collaborate with entrepreneurs as it provides more of an opportunity to work closely on a project together. I just started a new blogCollaboratingEntrepreneur.com to begin to explore how collaboration is becoming the new business paradigm.

Do you see the same distinctions I do between coaching, mentoring and collaborating? What has been your experience?

Being shy in business never results in much worthy discussing therefore being open to promoting yourself and getting the word out about your business is pretty darn important. 

Many marketers have shied away from direct branding or selling on social media sites for fear of alienating consumers, Performics points out. Marketers should instead understand how consumers interact with individual social media sites––and what types of offers and messages engage consumers and motivate them to act, the new research suggests.

Among Twitter users, for example:

• 48% have used search after seeing ad on Twitter.
• 44% say they are receptive to promotions and offers.
• 44% say they have recommended a product on Twitter.
• 39% have discussed a product on Twitter.

Among Facebook users who have connected with a brand on the site:

• 46% say they are likely to talk about or recommend a product.
• 44% say they are likely to purchase a product.
• 37% say they are likely to link to an ad for a product.
• 27% say they are likely to post an ad for a product.

Among YouTube users:

• 36% say they have visited an online retailer or ecommerce site after learning about a brand on a social site.
• 31% say they have discussed a brand on a social network site after seeing an ad in another channel.

Via http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2009/3157/social-media-users-open-to-branding-marketing

"One in four respondents have four or more active social network accounts and more than one quarter access their Facebook or Twitter accounts at least one a day via their mobile phone," said Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research. "We knew that these sites are extremely popular for socializing, but the level of interest for branding and promotional marketing content is surprisingly large."

About the research: Based on a survey of 3,000 US consumers, the study was conducted by Performics, the performance-marketing unit inside Publicis Groupe's VivaKi Nerve Center, and ROI Research, an analytics and technology firm.

How will we define success in social media marketing in 2010 and beyond?

Certainly, Chris Brogan has a lot to say about social media marketing and I find this particular question to be very  thought-provoking and useful to get focused on how we want to model success in social media for our businesses.

How do we develop relationships that yield? – It’s great to have 100,000 friends on Twitter. How many take action? Of the 36,000 folks who subscribe to my blog, I usually get between 50-100 comments per post. That’s less than 1/3 of 1%. If comments were my business, I’d say that stinks. Relationships that yield are how we separate “friends” or “community members” from “customers” in our various business buckets. They overlap, but for the sake of this question, think strongly about “yield” and what it means to you. Via Questions We Should Ask

I really like how Chris asks us to consider how we differentiate between friends, community members and customers, especially how he encourages us to think long and hard about what the word "yield" means to us.

I don't know about you, but I plan to take the time to think about the word "yield" and the criteria I will use to determine what success looks like for me in the age of social media. I'll report back here with my ideas and perhaps a chart once I have it completed.

This guy was lucky! How many times does that happen on a game show?

Fascinating study of reality and how colours getting converted to sound can be a tool to help visually impaired to find objects. Courtesy The Chris Voss Show. http://thechrisvossshow.com/?p=1277

"Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."  ~ Steve Jobs

"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today." ~ Steve Jobs

This is a great tip I pulled from John Hayden. Great tips John!

Constructing an outbound road

• Get a Facebook Page and put a fanbox on your site.
• If you’re on Twitter, put a follow me button on your site.
• While we’re at it, get a blog – it’ll have an RSS feed folks can grab.
• If you’re a museum, have an outbound link to your Flickr gallery.
• If Plurk is your home, put a link on your site.
• Make sure these connection points show up on every appropriate page on your site – not just the home page.
• Put social media links in your email newsletters.

Again, it’s all about giving customers, donors and prospects multiple ways of opting in to you and what you offer.

I have summarized these social media (SM) integration tips from Social Media Today. What I like is these are not your typical tips for why you should use social media but how to "integrate" SM into your opverall marketing mix.

3 Step Social Media Adoption Plan

1. Devise an appropriate, tactically-agnostic social media strategy
2. Audit your current marketing, and add social media ingredients
3. Where necessary, add new social media programs

5 Ways to Achieve Cross-Media Synergy with Social Media

1. Social Media + Search Marketing
2. Social Media + Email
3. Social Media + Virtual Events
4. Social Media + Live Events
5. Social Media + Market Research

Drop by and visit the post as it contains additional links to most of these strategies.