Imagine a scenario, you’re just about ready to get on your coaching call and you’re about to start talking to your coaching client and as you start speaking your client says, I can’t hear you, are you like in a submarine or are you in a plane or something? That’s the worst -case scenario right? Your entire work depends on your presence and your words and in today’s mobile world, tech savvy world, while we are doing most of our coaching online, what are some of the tools that you could really use to be able to create that experience that even being virtual feels very personal?
Five useful tech gadgets
So let me give you five tech gadgets that you absolutely need to be able to create a beautiful experience online between you and your clients. The first gadget has to do with something that is so important in a online coaching world. When you’re coaching your client, it’s very important that you can hear the words they are saying and they can hear the words you are saying. If they cannot hear what you’re saying and they don’t clear it super clean, they may misunderstand the question itself that may lead to not have that wonderful a response and that wonderful an experience for the client.
Shure MV7 mic
So my first gadget for you is Shure MV7 mic. It’s a little bit heavy as a mic and you need to get the right stand to make sure it fits really well with your desk setup but Shure MV7 is such a great mic. Firstly, it’ll make you sound like you’re talking from a radio station which means your voice is gonna be clear, it will sound a little deep, it reduces the echo that you may have in your room, it makes it sound like radio-like which means it’s really really crisp and clear to the person that’s listening. This mic is so good that it’s great if you actually do podcasts or create content on your computer because you can just plug in this mic. It’s a USB port mic or XLR mic so if you’re getting very techie you can do that too but if you just use it simply for connecting to your computer, beautiful mic. Absolutely beautiful, great audio quality, great for podcasting, great for coaching calls, great for overall. It is slightly more expensive than a regular mic that you can buy for a hundred bucks but it’s totally worth the investment. I absolutely love this mic and every single time I’m in a coaching environment and somebody asked me here what mic, for the matter I think I havethree of those because me and my wife both coach so I have one for me, one for her and then we have one extra because we have abeautifulmic. Please consider getting this mic for your coaching practice.
Logitech C90X
The second key element is how do you look? It’s very important the look that you have and the clarity of look that you have when you’re working with a client in an online setting. See a lot of coaches get by by either blurring their background or just using their native computer camera and some some of those are good if you have a new MacBook your camera is as good quality as the camera that I’m going to suggest but if you are somebody that does not need to upgrade their computer just yet here is a $60 solution that I have for you maybe $70 and that is a Logitech C90X.
It’s a simple webcam that sits right on top of your computer it is a 1080p camera you do not need a 4k camera for your computer. See when we stream online on zoom or any of the software’s after a point the definition of the video is about the same. There’s virtually no difference if you use a 4k webcam or a C90X webcam. The only big difference that you would see significantly so if you come to a live call with me you’ll see a significant difference in how I look but that’s because I have a $3 ,500 camera that actually reports that video at about a $1 ,500lens.
You only want to invest that kind of money if you’re coaching businesses that large. I use a camera called Sony FX3 it’s a movie quality almost movie quality camera and so the view that you get if you’re a live call with me is that good but honestly most of us don’t need that you don’t need to invest that kind of money in your camera just yet and honestly until very recently I wasn’t using anything else but the Logitech C90X and it does amazing.
So get that camera but it’s an important thing to note and it’s not a tech thing to note but it’s important thing to note is what’s behind you. Again you can always blur the background and that looks alright but I really invite you to pick a spot in your house or your office wherever you do most of your coaching calls and make the See theexperience that we have online sometimes is not only about what we are saying and what we are doing but how the person is feeling. Do they feel invited? Do they feel like they’re part of us?
How can we make a virtual experience feel like a personal experience? And that only happens by making sure our background looks interesting, that we move with the camera, that I’m going close and far which makes you feel more intimate or less intimate. Like my expressions are more pronounced than I would be if I were talking to you personally because you can feel my energy personally but on video you can’t. So getting a good camera is also about making sure your expressions are transmuted through that lens, go through the internet and reach the other person in the most beautiful way.
So invest a little bit in finding a spot in your house or your office, make it static, make it beautiful so aperson can feel inspired when they’re speaking with you.
Calendly
The third gadget and you may be using some version of it but if you’re not you may want to start considering doing this and that is using a Calendly or anycalendar scheduling software that you like online. Schedule Once is one of them. I just happen to like Calendly so I’m offering you to look at Calendly. Why is this gadget so important?
See after a point your coaching practice gets chaotic. You are constantly wasting time and going back and forth on scheduling times, being able to move times easily, rescheduling calls and sometimes you just don’t have time enough to look at your email and look for that email that might have requested a reschedule or a cancel or whatever that might be. So once you’ve engaged a client what you want to do is give them the power to set up calls at an appropriate time that works for them. Be able to reschedule if they’re not gonna make it, be able to cancel if they need to cancel right away.
Having a simple software that allows to do all of that allows for you and your client to do this dance alot more easily. It also makes sure that you don’t have unnecessary things on unnecessary times booked on your calendar. See the power of software like Calendly is you could say on Fridays I don’t want to do coaching calls and you could just block it. You could say well when I’m doing a podcast call I want to only do 30-minute podcasts and that could be a part of your say Wednesday’s 30-minute calls on a podcast.
If you want one Monday’s or Tuesday’s to just only be booking sales call you can block that day for a sales call. So it really optimizes your mind, it optimizes your space to be able to do your work and focus on the work versus focus on management of the work. And as a coach, as a 101 coach more specifically as an online 101 coach, it’s wildly important for you to have a tight schedule so you can make the most out of the time that you’re investing and putting into work and so Calendly becomes a really really useful software.
Good light
Then comes the next technology that again you may or may not have considered just yet and it’s unfortunate that most of the coaches just use the ring light. The ring light are cheap stand-up lights that you put anywhere and they light you up alittle bit but usually it makes you look not very good let’s say on camera you look like you’re overly bright or less bright and the lighting is kind of off and it always has a little bit of shadow. So if you’re ready to upgrade and look good on camera, look good on that very important online calls that you’re doing again and again again literally your business runs on it then I want you to start considering looking at the newer 90 watt desk light.
The beauty of these lights are they can mount on the desk so they have like little screws that you can mount it up on the desk and then these lights have a great variance so it doesn’t have to always be white or yellow and whatever skin tone you have you can turn it up or turn it down and once you’ve set it up to look how you want it to look you never have to touch it again. So you’ll find that corner in your house or your office you set up those lights you turn them on your camera is defaulted to the Logitech C90X your mic is Shure MB7 this allows you to have a fantastic experience when you’re talking to your client it just looks beautiful it looks amazing it’s consistent all the time you have to absolutely never think about it and you’ll always look good on the camera and that is very very very very very very very important when you are an online coach because as an online coach that is the only appearance that your client sees is this much right they never get to really experience energy between you and them because you physically may or may never meet right so as an online coach it’s so important that your presence is good which is why these tools are so very important and that brings me to the final tool.
Fathom
This is one that uses AI and you need this tool going forward you may have gotten by without this tool in the past but I’ve almost found it to be more valuable to have it versus to not have it see I’m somebody who says I don’t take client notes and I don’t even till date but what I found increasingly useful is a lot of times while in the presence of a coaching conversation instead of me taking notes for myself so I don’t take client notes to send to clients but I do take notes for myself but instead of me taking those notes now I can do it with a click of a button see it’s very likely that you use zoom for your online coaching calls and if you use zoom there’s a plug-in called Fathom.
Fathom is an AI tool which helps you mark certain things and creates an automatic summary of the call you just had now it is a little bit you know tricky because it does kind of violate the privacy and everything so you must take permission from your client to use the software.
But at the same one time if it is okay which I would assume 95 % of your clients would be okay because they are okay with mine is that your note -taking becomes incredibly easy very productive and you don’t have to be present to if I should write this note or not you just have to click so it’s very fast to do and because of that it’s also really fast to send those notes to your client so now nobody really has to take notes AI can take notes for you. And you can review those notes very very quickly simply by going to those notes right before the call again so your work is reduced by maybe 40 50 percent here on note -taking and remembering and reminding yourself of where you were in the last. All of that is taken care of by AI software and in matter of seconds in matter of minutes so I really encourage you to consider some kind of AI tool that allows you to take notes while you’re on the call with your client to make your work more productive and the outcome more succinct and powerful for your clients as well.
For whom the event is for