Ep 113 - Manage Your Coaching Business with Google
Business Success + Life Coach, Debbie Shadid, is talking with you about the variety of free tools available to manage your life coaching business inside of Google.
There are a lot of shiny software programs out there that promise a lot of bang for their buck. And they deliver, believe me. But it’s all too often that coaches sign up for bunch of technology they don’t actually need just yet.
Google is a fantastic place to start in organizing and managing your life coaching business. Aside from GMail, you’re able to create online documents to share with your team and colleagues, use an online calendar that can set up repeating meetings and store client information, sheets to help you organize your content ideas, and more.
Join us for this episode to learn how you can manage your life coaching business with the simple power of Google.
Use my affiliate link to sign up for Flodesk (I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you.)
Transcript
00;00;06;04 - 00;00;24;04 | Debbie
Welcome to the Business Building Boutique podcast for New Life Coaches. If you are a newly certified coach who's trying to figure out how to grow your business, you're in the right spot. Join me each week to learn simple business growth strategies, along with step by step marketing tips to get you seen by clients in your niche. I'm going to be your guide,
00;00;24;04 - 00;00;39;18 | Debbie
I'll tell you what to do so you can feel confident in your business. And here's the truth, ladies. You can build your dream coaching business without paid ads and without a fancy sales funnel. So if that sounds interesting and you're ready to get more paid clients then let's get started.
00;00;41;23 - 00;01;05;25 | Debbie
Hello. Welcome to today's podcast. Today, I'm going to continue in our series about software technology that you need for your coaching business. I should mention that I think it's very easy for you guys to run your coaching business on less than $50 a month and that $50 a month would be technology that you need. I recommend Canva Pro, I recommend Flodesk.
00;01;05;25 - 00;01;35;10 | Debbie
I do have a discount for Flodesk that I can share in the show notes and we'll be talking next week about Flodesk as part of this four-part series on technology and software that you need in your coaching business. But honestly, you guys, you really, everything else you can use free versions of. So, I want to encourage you to not go too far into getting subscribed to all of these software things because they all add up and you need to be at a particular place in your business to really make use of those.
00;01;35;13 - 00;01;55;29 | Debbie
Okay. So today we're going to talk about Google. Now, Google is free and there are lots of Google things that you can do. And this is another tool that I would highly encourage you to use. I'm going to give you the pointers, but I would encourage you to go and look at this on your computer so that you can see, or on your phone, so you can see more about what I'm talking about.
00;01;56;00 - 00;02;15;26 | Debbie
One of the great things about Google is that it's cloud based, and so you guys are going to be able to work on your phone on Google and also have it update on your desktop or your laptop, whatever it is. You can work on it from anywhere. So you guys will log into Google, into your Gmail account, your regular basic Gmail account.
00;02;15;26 - 00;02;32;26 | Debbie
Once you get into Google, you will see that there is a little grid of nine little dots up in the top right corner and they're the Google apps that you can use. This is what I'm going to be talking to you about today. Again, it's all free inside of there. That's where you're going to find your Google email.
00;02;32;26 - 00;02;49;04 | Debbie
You're also going to find Google Drive, which I will talk to you about. Google documents and some other things. Let me start by talking to you about Google Calendar. Now, I know many of you guys might be using like an Apple calendar, and I used that for years too. But let me tell you how I use Google calendar.
00;02;49;04 - 00;03;13;08 | Debbie
You can either do this with your own Google calendar or take these ideas and suggestions and use it on either your outlook calendar, Yahoo, Apple, whatever calendar format you're using. So the first thing is, is that I have everything on my calendar. I do not depend on my memory for anything. So if I need to do something tomorrow, I schedule it and I add it to my computer.
00;03;13;21 - 00;03;39;10 | Debbie
So it's on my calendar. So I don't forget. Also, I really want to encourage you from a productivity point of view to make sure that you are allowing enough time to get a task done. So if you're going to schedule that, you're going to do your social media marketing for the upcoming month. I want you to schedule enough time on your calendar that you can actually start it and finish it in the time block that you have.
00;03;39;10 - 00;03;57;28 | Debbie
I used to be really good about over-scheduling myself and not giving myself enough time to complete anything, which meant I was always behind. I will just kind of give you an example of that. It doesn't take 15 minutes to write an email. It takes 15 minutes maybe to write the email, but then you have to go through and proof it.
00;03;57;28 - 00;04;15;29 | Debbie
And if you're going to use some kind of email software like Flodesk, you've got to put it in Flodesk, you've got to make it look pretty. You got to get your list that you're going to send it to. You've got to send yourself some test emails. You get the point. It takes longer than 15 minutes, so maybe you block an hour on your calendar for writing an email.
00;04;16;13 - 00;04;39;15 | Debbie
Everything on my calendar is color coded. So when you look at my calendar at a glance and on the Google calendar, you can look at it at a day, a week or a month. If you look at it for the week, which I typically do over the weekend, I'll look to see what's coming in the week ahead. It's very structured by colors, so within Google you can have various colors that you use for certain things.
00;04;39;15 - 00;05;03;26 | Debbie
So like all of my private clients are red, the color block, the time blocks are red. All of the business building boutique coaching sessions are turquoise blue. So all of those on my calendar look the same. I block off every day for lunch. I know that sounds crazy, but if you guys don't do that, the next thing you know you'll be over-scheduled and you will not be having a lunch break.
00;05;03;26 - 00;05;26;27 | Debbie
And I did that a lot, so I block off. Lunches are yellow. That's also my time to maybe get out and get some fresh air and go for a walk. My own coach, the coach that I work with, our time colors are purple, so I don't need to go through all of it with you, but just know that it is so helpful to look at my week and see what I have on there.
00;05;27;10 - 00;05;48;25 | Debbie
And if it looks like a particularly busy week then I actually can go through and delete some things. I also set reminders on everything, so if I make an appointment for my group coaching, let's say for my office hours, it's Tuesday at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. I give myself reminders, a ten minute reminder and one hour reminder.
00;05;49;01 - 00;06;08;16 | Debbie
You can also give yourself a reminder 24 hours before. So if you like have you know, you need to produce content or you need to review something for an upcoming coaching session. With a client, you can give yourself a 24 hour reminder before their appointment to go and review the notes that you have, or maybe to prepare something or communicate with the client
00;06;08;16 - 00;06;47;18 | Debbie
somehow. All of that is super useful to be able to put reminders on things so that you don't miss an appointment. You can also add people to the appointment. So I can, with my private clients, I can add their email address and I can set up their appointment and I can say I want 12 appointments for every Wednesday for this particular person and I put down like their name, like I'll put Jo 1:1 and again it will be in red and then I'll set the appointment for 12 repeats and then it basically keeps track of it for me, you guys.
00;06;48;02 - 00;07;08;25 | Debbie
So if we have to reschedule, we can go into that one appointment and we can reschedule that one and it will still, you know, instead of eliminating one, it will still add that one on to the end. So when I think, gosh, I'm not sure where I'm at with the number of sessions I have with my client, I don't have to have any fancy software.
00;07;08;25 - 00;07;28;06 | Debbie
I can go to my Google calendar that I've already said I'm going to put 12 appointments in and I can search the name Jo 1.0 up at the top and it will show me how many appointments I've had with Jo. It will show me how many are scheduled as well. So it's a really great, super simple way to be able to keep track of clients.
00;07;28;06 - 00;07;47;08 | Debbie
And I know if you don't have a full client base, you might be thinking it's not that hard to keep track. But let me tell you, you get 20 or 30 clients, you cannot remember what is going on with your client. So you're going to want to have a way to go back and double check kind of what the status of things is.
00;07;47;08 - 00;08;11;04 | Debbie
All right. Google documents, let me talk to you about that. For those of you who don't use Google documents, that's going to be like word or it's going to be like pages. But the beautiful thing about it is it's cloud based. So you can use it on your phone, you can actually use it offline on an airplane so you can make a document offline, get on an airplane or someplace where there's no wi fi and work on that one document.
00;08;11;04 - 00;08;35;05 | Debbie
Soon as you get back to where there's wi fi, it will update the document. You can also collaborate with people on one document so you can share the one document. I can share it with my assistant, Angela, and she can make comments to me. She can either edit the document all the way or she can be a commenter and she may comments to whatever I've done or corrections back and forth.
00;08;35;05 - 00;08;58;20 | Debbie
We work on the same document. Now let me talk to you about how you use this in your coaching business. I also use the free version. That's the only version there is of Google document. And you will put your client's name. So let's say Jo 1:1 is the name of my document. And remember, if I had 12 sessions with her, I am going to start on this Google documents that says Jo 1:1.
00;08;58;20 - 00;09;16;01 | Debbie
I'm going to put the date on it and while Jo and I are coaching, I'm going to take all the notes on my Google document. After I'm done with our session, which has a date at the top, I put the date, I take the notes, I go in and I put a insert a line. So it takes a line and puts a line all the way across the document.
00;09;16;15 - 00;09;36;17 | Debbie
Then the next session I put the date, I take the notes. So I have all of our session notes on one document. So while I am coaching Jo, I can scroll back and forth on that document because I can move the document in front of Zoom. And she doesn't see that, right? The camera is on my face. I can see her if I want to
00;09;36;17 - 00;09;57;16 | Debbie
and the document is across the zoom screen. I can go back and forth and look and see what we talked about our last session or, you know, six months ago in a session and go back and forth and look for progress. That is so much fun. I just actually did that today with Jo. She started with me a year ago, almost actually a year to the date of this release of this podcast.
00;09;57;16 - 00;10;15;00 | Debbie
And as I was talking to her today in our appointment, I scrolled back down to our first appointment and I was able to look at the goals. You know, we talked about what do you want to accomplish while we work together? I was able to look at the goals and let me just tell you what, this girl has blown things out of the water.
00;10;15;00 - 00;10;36;17 | Debbie
She has a group coaching program and she has 70 something clients right now and is getting ready to open enrollment. And I think she's probably going to reach the 100 client mark - current clients at one time. This girl is like amazing. But in our notes I can go back and review that. I can go back and look at all the things. You guys know that I am the action girl.
00;10;36;17 - 00;10;52;26 | Debbie
So I'm telling you what to do. I'm I'm tracking what you've done. You know, I'm looking back on notes to help you see where you need to make shifts and changes in your business. I talk to you about your marketing. We look to see what's effective, what's working, what's not working, and all of that is on that one document.
00;10;53;07 - 00;11;13;03 | Debbie
So that is how you're going to use Google documents. All right. The last piece of that is that you can share it with the client if you want to. So I have a client that I have coached for a couple of years, and she's a private client. And we have our document that I shared with her. So all of the notes that I take, she can go and look at as a reminder.
00;11;13;03 - 00;11;32;16 | Debbie
But the great thing is, is that she uses the top of the document when she goes on to my document, she at the very top puts like an agenda the things that she knows she wants to talk to me about business wise. You know again, I'm a business coach, so there's always things that come up. It's like, I don't know what to do about this or I'm wondering about this price or about this offer.
00;11;32;22 - 00;11;52;22 | Debbie
She puts those questions so she'll put our next the date of our next appointment up there at the top and the four or five things that she wants to make sure she remembers to talk to me about. And then I scroll down to the bottom and that's where I keep my notes. So it's pretty cool. That actual document with this particular client is 68 pages long, but it's all in one sheet.
00;11;52;25 - 00;12;13;09 | Debbie
It's all just scroll right through it to the bottom of it and we can look back over a long history of what we've accomplished together, which is, again, very fun. All right. That is Google documents. Next, I want to talk to you about Google Sheets. Google Sheets is basically just like Excel or numbers. And it is a place where I want you to keep ideas.
00;12;13;09 - 00;12;36;19 | Debbie
I want it to be your content bank. I want you to store any ideas like other screenshots that you've taken where there's a quote or there's an idea for an Instagram post or whatever it is. I want you to put all those ideas into an idea bank. I also want you to put whatever it is you're posting in this spreadsheet, within this spreadsheet on Google, and you can add tabs across the bottom.
00;12;36;19 - 00;13;03;08 | Debbie
So it almost becomes like a loose leaf notebook where like page one can be about Instagram posts. Page two can be about email ideas, page three can be about group programs. And you guys know in Excel you can make the columns be anything you want. You can spread the columns out as big as you want. One of the great things about Google documents that I just talked about in this Google sheet is that you can search, you can put command F on your keyboard.
00;13;03;08 - 00;13;21;12 | Debbie
And I'm using a Mac, so I assume it's the same on a on a PC, but you can put command F and a little search bar comes up. You can put in the word like Facebook ads and I can find anywhere in the 68 page document or anywhere on that spreadsheet, I can find where the word Facebook ads is.
00;13;21;12 - 00;13;44;04 | Debbie
That's kind of a fun hack that you can do to be able to keep all of your information together in one place. Then you can share that spreadsheet, your content bank with your future assistant, right? You can share that with somebody. Everything is all in one location. And I by the way, I want you guys eventually to have assistants, virtual assistants.
00;13;44;04 - 00;14;05;27 | Debbie
I have somebody somebody who's listening to this podcast right now that I just am so grateful for her name to Angela and she's just done so much for me. And you have to be organized. Luckily, she's also very organized, but you want to be organized so that you can be prepared to work with an assistant. That's something I wish somebody would have told me and explained to me from the beginning.
00;14;06;10 - 00;14;25;29 | Debbie
I wasn't actually prepared to work with an assistant. So that's my hope is that you will put your content on this Google sheet all in one location so that you can go back and reference it all. Your ideas can be there. You can access it from your phone or from any computer. Okay, you're also going to have Google phone.
00;14;26;00 - 00;14;49;23 | Debbie
This, you guys is the phone that you should be using for sure. Do not give clients your personal cell phone. You want to use a Google phone and it's free. Pick a phone number in Google phone and you can text clients from there. They can send you text message back. They can attach files, you can send pictures and they can call you and it can be set up on your regular personal phone.
00;14;49;24 - 00;15;13;09 | Debbie
It's just an app that you add and you can dial somebody from your Google phone on your personal phone. So it's a really great way of setting up some boundaries between clients. I like to give people my cell number because I want to be really available. And when I do consultation calls, I also include my cell number on the consultation reminder and say, please text me if you need anything before our appointment.
00;15;13;09 - 00;15;33;17 | Debbie
And that's a great way for me to do that because I'm not giving my personal contact. Right? I don't have to answer the person back if I don't want to. So Google phone, get yourself a Google phone number. Okay. A couple other pieces that I will tell you about. And we could spend the whole I don't know, we could do a whole series on Google applications just by itself.
00;15;33;17 - 00;16;02;20 | Debbie
Okay. Next up, what I want to talk to you about is Google Drive. I want you to think about Google Drive as being a file cabinet. So if you think that an old fashioned metal file cabinet, you pull it out and there's folders in there and all of the folders can be labeled. So if you guys are familiar with Dropbox, it's very similar to that and you can again share files. So you can have a file folder with your business branding in it that is shared to you from your graphic designer.
00;16;02;20 - 00;16;22;00 | Debbie
And I can share that with my assistant. And the great thing about it is with all the things I'm talking about sharing you guys, you can revoke access. So let's say I didn't want my graphic designer to have access to that particular file anymore. I can remove her from the shared files so she doesn't actually have access anymore.
00;16;22;03 - 00;16;41;16 | Debbie
So beautiful thing. Think about it as a file cabinet. It's all right there. Which also means you guys, that while you're on your phone or your iPad or on vacation or away from your desktop, you can access any of your files, anything you need, any of your client files, any of your photos, like something you want to put on Instagram.
00;16;41;16 - 00;17;04;13 | Debbie
Anything can be saved in a file folder in Google Drive. All right. A couple other things. I'll just mention quickly that I'm not going to go into. Google My business is amazing. If you guys are doing any local business, it is something that you need to get set up on for sure. It is a way for you to get your business established on Google and be found, so you're going to want to do that.
00;17;04;13 - 00;17;29;16 | Debbie
That's another Google tool that is free. You can also set up for free Google Analytics. I won't go into that, but Google Analytics is something that will track what's happening on your website so that you can see what pages are being visited and it is free. You also can do Google Meet. Google Meet is like Zoom and it's something honestly that I want to learn about.
00;17;29;16 - 00;17;47;01 | Debbie
I haven't used it. I used it way back years ago, but I haven't used it recently. Somebody that I had an appointment with used it and let me tell you what I experienced so you guys can check it out yourself. They sent me the appointment through Google calendar. They invited me to the appointment. I accepted the invite to the appointment.
00;17;47;05 - 00;18;05;18 | Debbie
When I accepted the invite to the appointment, the Google Meet link was on there, kind of like a Zoom link when I joined the meeting on Google Meet. It's the same as Zoom. You're able to share screens and record things and all the things that you do already on Zoom. The great thing about it was, is the recording,
00;18;05;18 - 00;18;24;15 | Debbie
after we were done automatically got emailed back to me. So the way that I can access like the replay from our session was through the same appointment on my Google calendar. So that's pretty cool. If you guys are using Zoom and you are sharing things back with your clients after, you know, a recorded session and they say, could you send me that session?
00;18;24;15 - 00;18;46;14 | Debbie
It's a great way to make things more efficient because it automatically goes back to the client. You don't have to download, save anything. They just get a copy of it and then it's their responsibility to download it from their Google calendar appointment. All right. I hope that this has been useful to you. I love Google. I really do. Google documents, Google calendar, Google Phone.
00;18;46;14 - 00;19;06;28 | Debbie
These are things that I use every single solitary day. Google sheets. You know, my contacts are in Google because I use the Google phone, just a whole bunch of tools that are really, really fantastic. So get in there and get familiar with Google and use it with your clients. Use it with your future assistants and your future team.
00;19;07;08 - 00;19;26;00 | Debbie
All right, you guys, let me know what questions you have. Please reach out to me via email debbie@debbieshadid.com if you have any questions about this. It's kind of hard to teach about software on a podcast, but hopefully I'm giving you enough ideas that you can get over there to Google and start messing around if you don't already know it.
00;19;26;12 - 00;19;56;24 | Debbie
And put some of the things that I've talked to you into practice. Have an amazing day. Until next time, bye-bye. That's it, thanks for listening. Now it's up to you. Put what you learned today into action. Do what you need to be seen and then hired by clients in your niche. And if you're ready to stop wasting your precious time and get your business finally booked up, you're invited to join me in the Business Building Boutique for New Life coaches, where you will learn everything you need to be a coach with plenty of paid clients.
00;19;56;24 - 00;20;05;25 | Debbie
All right. Have an amazing week. Until next time, bye-bye.