Evolutionary Blog

For many, many months, I have re-posted this note on my facebook wall. Given the positive feedback I have recieved, I thought I would post i there for your benefit.

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"I am a mouth for a process that many of us are going though. The more intimately I deal with how it is for me, the more intimately I am sharing how it is for you." -Ram Dass

Some have asked about my updates. The are sexual/primal. And then emotive [poetry shares] and then cognitive/political and then spiritual/ethereal/transcendent. Huh. Yeah. Weird, huh?

What's up with this guy? Where is The.McClain comin' from?

As I have written before, it is not transcend and deny, it is not transcend and suppress. Rather transcend and *include*.

I assert being fully alive is to be sexual and primal. To be emotive and love. To be cognitive and mentally sharp and discerning AND yes, of course to be Spiritual/transcendent/ethereal. ALL of it. ALL fully flowing ::: ALL channels open. All channels awake. All channels channeling.

I have also found that the more I give voice to the darker more primal drives, the more comfortably my students and clients are willing to share and examine those places within themselves -- the more they are able to feel safe. AND within that, they can accelerate the dissolution of those aspects to the degree that it is appropriate. For them. For the very process of evolution. The evolution of conscious evolution.

And it all begins by shining the light on the "shadow" aspects of ourselves. The unspoken [and "inappropriate" aspects of ourselves. The politically incorrect. The lecherous. The murderous. The rageful. The ... well you get it. Consciousness, when it is at full, is *all* of it.

It is all, of course, part of the human experience.

RSVP Required. See below for details.

Right now is the time for the Evolutionary Professional™. The emergent agent of change integrating purpose and wealth; doing well as a result of doing good-- integrating universal spiritual principles and free market economics. I understand that the more of you I empowers to be successful, and have a full-time practice that is thriving, the better off the world will be. 

"I doubled my business in the first two months of the program [Coaching the Life Coach] by Jason McClain!"       -Boston Blake

There are only a few components successful coaches and practitioners must incorporate into their practice to turn it into a business. At the same time, you can be “doing” these things, and still be unsuccessful unless you have the necessary techniques and ethical tactics incorporated into the components. 

Not just the “how” but “how specifically”.

In this free evening talk discover:

• The 3 Necessary Components for Building and Maintaining a 6-Figure Practice
• 7 "Tricks of the Trade" including :::
  • 4 strategies successful coaches and practitioners engage in on a regular basis to maintain their practice
  • 3 critical techniques to turn your initial consultations into results
• The Number 1 Mistake that Practitioners and Coaches make in their marketing strategy and their copy writing
  • [and it’s solution]

We'll get into how to create and hone your extended offering/package for clients. We'll talk about how to give talks, blog, and give teleseminars to acquire clients. And yes, we'll get into Evolutionary Sales™.

A system I will hand over to you in this talk. Fine-tuned, and streamlined over years of trial and error.

Yep, all in just a couple hours.

"Jason McClain is the real deal. His personal life story makes the stories of both Tony Robbins and Christopher Howard look like happy-go-lucky children’s books. He has been quoted as saying, 'if I can be happy and successful anyone can'.  -Former Student, Anonymity Requested

When?  ::: Tuesday October 11th @ 7:15pm

Where? ::: In San Francisco. RSVP for exact location. Space is limited.

Why?   Why ...

I believe that right now is the time for the Evolutionary Professional™. The emergent agent of change integrating purpose and wealth; doing well as a result of doing good-- integrating universal spiritual principles and free market economics. I understand that the more of you I empowers to be successful, and have a full-time practice that is thriving, the better off the world will be.

Evolving the planet one client at a time is great, but it is horribly inefficient. *laughing* Let’s accelerate the process together.

A student of my material sent an email with some very good questions for client management including how to handle contract extensions, referrals, testimonials and general end-of-contract dynamics and structures.

I have re-posted relevant portions of the email exchange below for you.

I've listened to your recordings from previous coaching programs and have found them to be insanely valuable. I've signed 8 clients and raised my rates already in the first few months of the program, and I attribute it to following your sales process to a "T".

A HUGE thank you.

My pleasure. I am delighted to hear they were useful to you.  

As a couple of my 6-session coaching packages are coming to a close, I have questions around how you structure the end-of-package process. Here are some specific questions:

Do you formally review outcomes with your clients at the end of a package? If so, how do you structure this conversation?

 

Yes we do. Twice in fact. We review their outcomes and the stated evidence for those outcomes about 2/3 of the way through the process. This review is important so we can see where we are on track, see where we already achieved the outcome(s), and see where we need to focus out remaining time together.

Additionally, in the final session, what we do is review their outcomes [mostly I print them out and hand them the assessment we made together] and with those, I have them fill out an extensive feedback sheet or "exit survey" as I like to call it. 

When do you raise the issue of referrals? I love how you talk about referrals on the FAQ page of your site, and I'm wondering how else you support those ideas and maximize the chance of the client biasing toward action.

I never really raise the issue of referrals along the way. For two reasons really, 1) I find it a little off for the Evolutionary Sales™ approach, and 2) I usually I do not have to because they do--and when they mention this friend or that colleague, I tell them how to refer people to me--get their permission to give me their contact information and leave the rest to me.

Additionally, because referrals are part of the agreement they signed, the exit survey gives them an opportunity to write down two names and phone numbers for referrals they have permission from to do so--which re-presences it for them if they have forgotten; it is right there on the last page of the feedback sheet.

Do you collect testimonials from clients? This seems like it would be good material for my website, which isn't up yet. If so, how do you frame it? When do you ask for it (i.e. at the end of a package, when the client is at a peak)

Yes, of course. When they write or say something that is a peak or they are acknowledging me about something I simply ask, "can I quote you on that?" with a friendly chuckle. Then I ask them if I can edit it and send it to them for their approval before I publish it. Sometimes they want anonymity, but I then just use it and us this attribution:  " --Anonymity Requested".  

The truth is, I have no interest in the compliment personally [as in an ego boost or a pat on the back--no interest in that]. However, practically and professionally, you bet I want to hear that--as long as I can quote them on it. Compliments are of no value to me. Testimonials are.

Often, when they say something that would make a great testimonial, typing it up is the thing that is in their way and delays it becoming a testimonial. That, and they are worried about writing it well or "doing it right". So I offer to type it up for them to capture their sentiments and send it to them for their approval.

In the modern marketplace, if you are in business for yourself or at a high level within a company you work for, it is impossible to avoid social media and its use if you truly want to thrive. That combined with what I believe is an emerging Age of Authenticity ... well, you get the picture.

Just scratching the surface of the broad strokes, it allows you to:

1. Provide value to others
2. Manage your brand
3. Market inexpensively and freely
4. Show your human side
5. Stay connected to others, events, and your own reputation
6. Other fun and cool stuff

This is why I cover social media in depth in the technology module of the Evolutionary Sales course.

But recently, I have stumbled onto a few resources I thought some would find useful and valuable, and I wanted to recommend them to you.

The first is a wonderfully in-depth book I read about a year ago: Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand. Whether you are a solo-preneur or you are in charge of PR for an enterprise level organization, its content will be very, very useful to you. Chock-full of examples of both the dos and don'ts and great advice for best practices. I recommend you pick it up at Amazon at the link above.

And since social media is all about sharing, here is an incredibly useful article: 9 Reasons Why Your Content Is Not Shared on Social Networks: New Research. Again, very useful stuff backed by a respectable amount of research. Links to follow in that post as well.

And if you are looking for full education around social media for small or solo businesses, I can not recommend Laura Roeder enough. Just a great person who really, really knows her stuff and is on a scale the rest of us can relate to. She gives away a ton of free valuable content if you subscribe to The Dash.

On blogging [and really, email marketing as well] here is a great piece intended for students, but equally as relevant for solo-preneurs in re blogging, articles, and email marketing on how to write great headlines and subject lines, using, one again, using some of Guy Kawasaki's Genius.

And finally for this post, I thought I would round it out with something humorous/light/fun and also very useful. So many people ask [especially now that Google+ is out to a wider invite pool] which social media service they should join, or what is suited for them, or what is the differences among them, or even, "what's the point". So, via the genius of Guy Kawasaki comes the Social Network Decision Tree. Have fun with that.

UPDATE ::: several people have asked me about facebook fan pages. Without intending the pun, I am not a fan of fan pages on facebook. You can read a prime example of why I do not recommend them »HERE«.

And in general, I have a long-held aversion to running anything in re business where I invest a lot of time, energy and/or money when I do not "own" the data and the DB. I have known a couple people who have lost everything in biz groups as a result of a facebook "oops". You do not really own your data, and your ability to administer it is at least limited on facebook [or any other social networking site].

At the same time, the service is free--you get what you pay for--and we have no right to complain about such a great platform that is offered to us at no cost.

Having said that, it does not mean I will build my business on it in any signifigant way.

How I think facebook pages can be useful is to interact with followers on a platform they are already subscribed to, but I still think the pages should be used to drive traffic to our actual web sites outside of the closed eco-system of facebook.

Update 2:   in re who reads what [links you share, emails you send out, etc. Again, via Guy Kawasaki ::: "Fascinating study by Bit.ly about the lifespan of tweets and updates. It found that the half-life (how long it took for 50% of all clicks to occur that a link would ever get) was 2.8 hours for Twitter, 3.2 hours for Facebook, and 3.4 hours for direct messages (such as email)."

Check out the research » HERE« And speaking of the stream, readmore about the art of the Tweet repeat » HERE«

Update 3: Also ... be sure to check out How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Website Sins.

Update 4: I have been asked about scheduling tools for social media. The tool I currently recommend is Hootsuite Pro. It allows you to scheudle your entire markeitng day [or your social stuff while you are off the grid] in advance. I used to recommend TweetDeck, but sice twitter bough them and took over development, they stripped it of a lot of its functionality.

And if you have not read the email charter, do that » HERE « 

We have been sold a bill of goods around ego. One that creates internal division and conflict. One that creates internal dissonance. One that creates pain. One that, at its worst, can foster a certain degree of self-hatred. A dis-ownership of the self. A bill of goods that is 2,500 years old in terms of its story around ego, the nature of ego, and the "problem" of ego.

And there is a better way. One that can create the same intended result with a kinder, gentler more self-accepting approach that can accelerate the evolution of the ego through the radical acceptance of expanding the ego, rather than attempting the psychological and spiritual suicide of ego annihilation. 

You can also see some similar themes around ego in the business context, read this article:  Self-Esteem and the Solo-Preneur | Internal vs. External Locus of Responsibility for an even deeper cut, taken from an email I sent a client a couple years ago, read Your Self-Worth is a Settled Matter.

Ok...ready? ::: Heh.

A quote from Ken Wilber I posted spawned an in-depth, yet brief—discussion on the nature and evolution of ego, Spiral Dynamics, the Integral community, and related topics, including the difference between cognitive development and actual development ::: the difference being understanding vs emotional response and being, or stated differently ::: one’s “center of gravity”.

The style is conversational, as it was an actual conversation.

Below are excerpted comments in the thread that followed. The order of some of the comments have been changed for continuity of the discussion, and for flow. Some have been deleted for the sake of relevance. If you want to see the full, unedited thread for yourself, you can see that HERE. The edited and streamlined version is below for your reading enjoyment.

The quote that started it all :::

“The ego is not a thing but a subtle effort, and you cannot use effort to get rid of effort--you end up with two efforts instead of one. The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine, and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying to get rid of ego, which simply increases the effort of ego itself.” --Ken Wilber 

Of course, I cannot speak for Ken Wilber—nor will I attempt to.

Simultaneously, I have read and listened to most of his stuff. As a result, I can certainly imagine—to varying degrees of accuracy—what he is speaking to, so I will attempt to translate him.

AND this will be based on my own experience after 19 years of conscious work, clearing, and self-examination and evolution—AND based on my work with over 200 clients one-on-one in my Personal Evolution Program, which lasted [when I used to do that work]  about 7 months--designed to accelerate the evolution of their ego ::: to widen their embrace. To increase their ease. To reduce their fear. To eliminate most of their anger. To increase their esteem for the Self.

So I may be and will be projecting/hallucinating…and it will be accurate—to varying degrees. Your mileage may vary.

So…what is “ego”? Most in popular spiritual and psychological circles will say we must transcend our ego, or worse ::: “annihilate it”. Is this healthy? Is this ecological? Does it suit the ecology of the environment we exist in?

The ecology of the self?

Is “ego what motivates us” as Pi asserts? Perhaps sometimes, yes. perhaps always—sure.

And the question for me becomes, motivates HOW? From what stage? Because, you see, we will be motivated differently from different stages, for different reasons.

For me, ego is essentially the seat of our consciousness. Where it rests and comes from. Not its Source. Its Source is the very kosmos ::: consciousness with a capital C. 

James Reidy suggested as a definition :::

Ego: n. a person's conscious and unconscious beliefs about their own identity.