A Happy New Year 2019 to you. May it bring you health, happiness and lots of success in your projects.

The holidays are over and you are probably already getting back-to-work blues. That’s alright, most of us  experience a form of adjustment and maybe even feel a little overwhelmed at the change of pace

I thought I could ease myself in slowly by starting on Thursday already and then it hit me like a snowball. Friday, I was working away in a frenzy and did about four loads of washing at the same time. (I know, multitasking is not good for the brain, but every machine run is a bit like a smoking break – not that I smoke…but you get the gist.)

Since a long time I haven’t written a to-do-list other than the ones, I write to structure my housework. However, on Friday I wrote one and still many items are open because the client work, lecture and workshop preparations were more urgent than many of those small tasks.

I thought I should share with you my plan for starting this week in a mindful way even though it is packed.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I will do to get myself prepared. Hopefully, I have the energy to return to that to-do list every day of the next week.

• • Put away the holiday decorations – I know that’s the hardest part but it’s time to say goodbye to the holidays and throw out that Christmas tree (if you had one). I keep all cards but they go into a box and the decorations box is stowed away in the attic.

• • Start a new diary – Literally, it’s a new year and worth to get a new diary.

• • Fix your sleep cycle – I feel that far too many of us enjoy sleeping late during the holidays as group conversations go late into the night or you just can’t stop binging that new show on Netflix. From Monday I’m setting the alarm at 5.15 AM every day. Then I’m automatically tired at 10 PM and can go to sleep easily. On Saturday and Sunday, I will try to get up around 7 AM. Then it is easier to readjust. Ensure you do the same for the kids and encourage your spouse/partner as well.

• • Reconnect with yourself – The holidays can be a fun yet hectic time of the year and when the endorphins wear off, you may find yourself drained. Schedule some ‘me’ time and recharge yourself! Try to establish your weekly practices* again. If you have no time at all to yourself write down at least 10 wishes for the year.

• Cut down on snacks and reduce your alcohol intake back to normal – However delicious those holiday leftovers may seem, perhaps it’s best if we get back to giving our bodies healthier nutrition and rejuvenate our bodies! And while we now have all these New Year receptions coming up it is also better to bring down your alcohol level to normality. Maybe have herbal tea one or two nights a week.

With an ever-increasing number of professionals moving to another country for work, the holidays are the ideal time for a visit home and catching up with family and friends. It’s a magical time, with expats getting to re-experience their favorite memories – perhaps visiting that ice-cream store with a childhood best friend, reconnecting with an extended family member. These visits are why a lot of expats end up forming stronger bonds with their loved ones back home. Sometimes, we also want to be back in our own homes, our own lives and with our current friends. You might experience a bit of emotional turmoil, jet lag and other typical signs of travel.

That said, I know that for a lot of people, these vacations are a bittersweet affair. Returning might reinforce the feeling of loss at what was sacrificed for the sake of your career: the familiarity and comfort of ‘home’, relationships and even support networks. For those returning after a very long time, they might even find themselves feeling alienated in their own home and country, as they’ve gotten acclimatized to their new environment. Maybe you are happy to be back in the host country and suddenly realize that you are happy but that your spouse still hasn’t found that job he was looking for. And that you would feel better if your spouse had an identity again.

If your spouse has been looking for a job in Switzerland for more than six months and is desperate please send him my way.

We will offer the next #HireMeGroup starting 26 January 2019 and I have two spots left. Meetings will be held on three Saturday mornings from 9 AM to 12 PM in a new location in 8032 Zurich.

We will arrange one meeting per month on 26 January 2019, 16 February 2019, 9 March 2019. If you want to sign up or have a friend who needs to join us please reply to this email and let me know how I can reach you by phone.

Have a great start in 2019!

Angie

Do you want to start a career in Global Mobility? Do you want to become an even sharper and wittier consultant on top of GM Trends and well networked? 

Globalization, Digitalization, Urbanization, Outsourcing, and generational preferences are disrupting Global Mobility.

Automation, business transformation, and the gig economy challenge our approaches to global talent management, leadership development, and life planning.

What we assumed about pensions, family structures, migration, health and security in mobility policies is deconstructed by our realities.

These fundamental changes do not only have an impact on our policies and expats. They also shape our role, our profession and how we define our work.

I used to believe that someday Global Mobility Leaders will have a seat at the table. The time is now.

The Global Mobility Profession is ready for take-off. Are you ready to join our Cabin Crew?

Are you a Global Mobility Specialist or Manager? Do you feel it’s time for you to move on?

Do you feel you have all the capabilities, knowledge, skills to be successful in Mobility and international Human Resources for the next 20 years?

Do you have the necessary professional network and reputation to thrive?

• Improve your knowledge and skills in Global Mobility and international HR.
• Become a better listener and consultant.
• Raise your professional standing.
• Develop and maintain a professional network and support group in our community.
• Become more effective in (intercultural) communication.

Are you confronted with these challenges?

• Moving from being a transactional busy bee to being a recognized consultant,
• Suffering from imposter syndrome, fear of failure, perfectionism and other symptoms of fear (especially common among female professionals),
• Building effective professional relationships,
• Balancing work and personal life and staying healthy in a 24/7 environment,
• Negotiating across cultures and for promotions, talent programs, and other incentives,
• Knowing when to move on and finding a new role in this niche market,
• Deciding on a role in another country,
• Losing a job due to outsourcing and general industry trends.

Email angela@globalpeopletransitions.com to discuss your career development in Global Mobility.

“It is Rocket Science!”

Inge Nitsche (referring to Global Mobility)

by Angie Weinberger

When you are a business owner you often feel torn apart between taking on more clients and providing better service to your existing clients. Sometimes you might even feel that you deserve a higher quality in your personal life. Most business owners I know work every weekend and when they become mildly successful they realize that they have not been in touch with their oldest friends and even their family is often neglected.

While you are transitioning from being in the start-up phase where every penny counts to be on a plateau of a revenue stream coming in from existing clients and before you develop your business further ask yourself these 10 questions:

1) How much turnover do I need in order to have a basic income that is sufficient to survive?
– Write down this number.

2) If I would have more income how would I spend it? Which of needs are not fulfilled with my basic income?
– Start a wish list or wish book.

3) Am I willing to sacrifice quality time for these wishes or is time with friends and family more important to me?
– Mark the wishes you would still like to see fulfilled.

4) Could I provide a better service quality to my current clients and raise my prices before acquiring new clients?
– Go through your services and write down what you could improve.
– Consider the value of your services and explain them to new clients.

5) Do I work for other providers and do I have clients in my portfolio that are not willing to pay for my new price level?
– Communicate your new price level to these providers and clients.

6) Do I believe that my services are so unique that no one else can provide them in the same quality?
– Review your services for the uniqueness and see if you can make them even more unique so people do not really care how much you charge.

7) Am I happy with my services and do I feel rewarded with my price level?
– Check your gut feeling with the price tags.
– Review all your services again and throw out what does not suit you any longer.

8) Am I still doing work that is not well paid? Is it for a good cause?
– If the answer is yes and the work is for profit and not for a good cause I suggest you decline it going forward.

9) Do I believe that I can make a difference in the world with what I do?
– If the answer to this question is “No.” talk to me.

10) Will I learn to say “No” more often in 2019?
– You can only say yes to this question.

The year-end is a good time to review your prices and your service quality. Sit down with a glass of champagne to celebrate your success. Go through the ten questions above and practice to say “No” more often in order to say “Yes” to the right clients and the right jobs.

I recently wrote an article called “Digitizing Your Intercultural Coaching Practice – Ten Steps to a Digital, Global Coaching Practice” which was published in a short version in the SIETAR Europa Journal. Since the publication, I have made further progress on this topic and I hope to be able to answer your questions on how to deliver digital, intercultural coaching and what it actually means for your business model as a coach, trainer or consultant.

Digitalization is a megatrend. Still, most executive and business coaches work face-to-face with their clients. This is usually possible because classical coaching happens within the same city and like with a therapist a client builds a relationship with a coach over a relatively short period of time to follow certain goals. However, a lot of coaches are passed on between clients based on good old word of mouth. It’s not really a topic you write a review about on LinkedIn or Xing.

Digital Intercultural Coaching seems to be fairly new in the Swiss market. I’ve been running a coaching practice since 2012. Before I coached people in the companies I worked for. I had a few trial clients and I focus on Global Mobility in my coaching. So, my clients are intercultural, international and they are all extremely busy global people. Among others, I work with the Boudewijn Vermeulen® method. It works best face-to-face (F2F) and it is my preferred way of working. However, I have to admit that F2F is not always the best option for my business. I used to travel to a client in Basel for two hours for a 1.5-hour coaching session. In the early days of my coaching practice, I sometimes coached up to 15 clients in one week. That was the maximum I could manage with a good distribution of hours, without exhausting myself completely and with a good quality for the clients.

I started to doubt the coaching business model when I realized, that despite having a 60-hour workweek my income had dropped to one-third of what I made as a Global Mobility Leader earlier. I know that you have to accept a loss of income in your first two years as a founder but I was not making enough money to survive. I am the breadwinner in the family and Zurich is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

I decided to digitalize as much as possible. In addition to corporate seminars, I will now offer support groups and twice a year our one-week RockMeRetreat.

If you want to build a coaching model with potential to scale you need to adopt digital practices in order to serve more clients in a shorter time frame. I had experimented with Skype coaching and other online methods already and I figured out that a lot of my methods would work online too.

The 10-Step Plan to a sustainable Digital, Global Coaching Practice

Step 1: Tell the story of your ideal client

You are not in business for yourself. If you don’t work with a client as in a person who is willing to pay for your services you probably have a hobby. Before you think about your positioning in the market, you should know what your ideal client looks like and how she or he lives and works. It’s a good idea to write a story about your ideal client.

Step 2: Use LinkedIn to present yourself

You need to have an online presence in 2018. Even if you work as a freelancer you need to be able to show your qualification and approach online, you need to be able to connect with clients and potential colleagues online.

Step 3: Own a mobile-friendly website

If your website dates back to 1990 and is not mobile-friendly you should invest in making it mobile friendly. You could easily have a WordPress or google site without investing a lot of money.

Step 4: Work from home or a shared office

One advantage of a digital coaching practice is that your practice becomes location-independent. If you now think that you can work from coffee shops and the beach I would say that yes, in principle that is possible. You will still want to take calls from clients but you might be able to have those during specific hours of the day when you are in a disturbance-free area.

If you can work from home without feeling distracted this is your chance to move to the mountain hut you had dreamed about. However, in my experience, you can get lonely quite easily. I prefer to share an office in the city of Zurich so I can engage in offline networking and still offer physical meetings with my clients when they are close to my office. You will need a reliable Internet connection in order to hold Skype or Zoom calls. We work with Google-Meet too. It’s worthwhile investing in good headsets and a comfortable office chair.

Step 5: Work with a good email marketing tool

It took me a long time to figure out the best tools and media for sharing my messages with my clients and readers. I read a lot of blogs and reports and I curate content and events for my readers. They spend time reading interesting posts or watching relevant videos instead of digging through the social media circus. I always enjoyed sharing interesting content and now I use this skill professionally. I recommend Chimpessentials if you want to learn what email marketing really is and can do.

It’s important to understand that despite social media marketing you still want to build an email list with your own clients and prospects. I recommend a two-list approach. One list is for everyone who is vaguely interested in what you do. This is the where you let people join when they sign up on your website for free. In my view, it is mandatory that you have such a sign-up option. In WordPress, you could start with Magic Action Box for example. You should also have a list of paying clients. This VIP list is important for your targeted marketing campaigns.

Step 6: Invest in tech and your user platform

We developed our own web application called RockMeApp so we could run sessions without the use of paper and in parallel to a Skype or Google Meet call. Clients can enter their coaching targets and I can follow their weekly progress.

Step 7: Focus on selected social media

I could spend all day on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. My focus is on these three. Many coaches will tell you that you need to be on youtube and Instagram too. My advice is that you focus on the tool that speaks to your clients the most. I assume that most of my clients hang out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Step 8: Organize yourself with a good shared cloud drive and master sheets

One of the challenges of today is that we all share everything. It is more difficult to find what you need especially if the documents are not tagged correctly. I use a system where I try to sort all my work according to event date because I have a lot of events. I also use names and tags on my documents. As a shared drive, I work with Google Drive because it allows me to share work with my global, virtual team without having to send emails back and forth. It also works with corporate clients if they use Google Drive. In order to keep overviews of projects and tasks, I developed very simple master sheets in Google Sheets. I like to use sheets as I can post a link (URL) to the relevant document or website there.

Step 9: Clarify your purpose and pivot

One of my main enjoyments in having my own company next to working with incredible Expats, Expat Spouses and Global Mobility Managers is the fact that I have the time and capacity to write and edit. I have been pretty good at maintaining a weekly blog called the “Global People Club Sandwich”. I regularly get requests for guest posts and together with collaborators my company has published two workbooks in different formats.

I am considering a pivot for Global People Transitions into a publishing company, which will develop digital and analog tools for global people in intercultural transitions and Global Mobility Managers.

We will still offer our programs but I will try to bring the more standardized programs online and focus on a few selected clients. It means that you have a great chance to take over my programs and that you can offer your own version of the HireMe! Program. Once you buy the published “Global Career Workbook” you can use it for your Spouse Career Support, even if you are not based in Switzerland.

Step 10: Use paper as a strategy

My next step will be to reduce all the paper in the office. In order to do that, I do not allow myself a large quantity of printing paper and flipchart paper in the office. I try to have flyers and seminar presentations and folders printed by professional printing companies in order to be more environmentally conscious.

I also consider investing in a good scanner so that I can digitize all the documents that I have collected in my professional life. I have noticed though in the last two years that I am not fit for a completely digital life. One of the issues is that I seem to need paper to remember information better. So now I use paper as a strategy, for example, to write “morning pages” or “have-done-lists”. I use paper to write coaching notes.

To avoid printing, I use “print to .pdf” as a default on my printer and I work on a big screen in my office so I can reduce the necessity to print.

I have noticed that if I cannot read a document online it might be because they were formatted for print. In that case, it helps to go back to the original source and check if the same article has an online version.

Please share this post with your coaches and trainer friends who try to make a living.

Kind regards

Angie Weinberger

PS: Special thanks to Dr. Eva Kinast and Matthew Hill and my support group Claudia, Angelica, and Cornelia. Also to Atiq, Pascal, Robert, Bernd, Tine, Anette, my mom, aunt, and uncle. Pascale Z. and Jörg B. you all have been amazing supporters in 2018. (I hope I did not forget anybody).

Happy Holidays

With our HireMeGroup we hack the job market in Switzerland through developing strong business connections.

Have you been looking for a job or a new job for more than six months?

Have you written over 100 online applications without getting a positive response – EVER?

And are you sure that there are jobs in your field but you just never get a chance to show that you could excel at them?

And are you worried that you will never be able to feed your family, that your kids will never get the education they deserve and that your partner despises you for being at home?

Then it’s time to work with us. Because these are all good reasons to join our upcoming HireMeGroup with Angie Weinberger.

You will receive guidance from our experienced Global Mobility Coach Angie Weinberger and the support of a group of like-minded professionals. Angie is the author of “The Global Career Workbook”.

Hack the Swiss Job Market!

With the HireMeGroup you’ll hack the Swiss Job Market.

You’ll feel more self-confident in your job search and understand how to network even if you are introverted. Most of our clients find a job during or shortly after the HireMe! program.

Program Dates:

Meetings will be held on three Saturday mornings from 9 AM to 12 PM in a location in 8032 Zurich. We will arrange one meeting per month on 26 January 2019, 16 February 2019, 9 March 2019.

Arrange a meeting with Angie now to discuss and agree your personal goals for the #HireMeGroup. These should be completed before the start of the Group.

Fee CHF 1’200 + VAT per participant, payable before the start of the program.

Group size: Maximum 6 participants.

Prerequisites:

• Valid residence permit (L, B or F) for Switzerland. If you have an L-permit you can also join us. We are open to recognized refugees.
• The group will be run in English but in case you’d prefer to join a German group, please let us know.
• We will not accept more than six people per group to ensure that everyone has enough air time.
• Participants have to come to a new location in 8032 Zurich. If you live too far away ask Angie for 1:1 online coaching options.

Still deciding?

Not sure if a group coaching program is right for you? Here are some of the reasons why you might select a group, over an individual, coaching program

• Wider accountability not just to the coach but also to others in the group
• Gain immediate access to a trusted circle of like-minded professionals
• Expand your network faster – in a group, you will not only exchange experiences but also networks
• Receive feedback from the coach but also from others in the group
• Get access to our expertise at a lower cost

Not ready yet but you might want to join a group in the future?

Sign up for the Global People Club Sandwich.

Here is an outline of the content we usually cover in the HireMe! Groups. However, it’s not a training so content and discussion topics will always be customized according to the needs of the group on the day of the event.

Outline

Build your professional network in Switzerland or elsewhere

Refine your personal brand

Improve your professional presence online

Style your job applications to Swiss recruitment practices

Write effective Letters of Motivation

Learn the art of storytelling in interviews

Improve your stories

Deepen your understanding of your personal values

Improve your Executive Presence in Interviews

Set weekly targets at a healthy realistic pace

The Global Career Workbook

The Global Career Workbook will be used as a guide through the program.

Facilitator / Coach: Angie Weinberger