Having an ally can help minority firms gain more acceptance in the marketplace
- By Betty Armstrong
After 22 years in the coaching industry, Anna SooWildermuth has guided everyone from C-suite executives to frontline staff and individuals on to successful careers and social experiences. Her passion is seeing others succeed by enabling them to build self confidence, interpersonal skills, and resiliency to thrive in the modern world. By living her passion, she has built one of the most successful personal coaching firms in the country, Personal Images, Inc.
Her core insights as a coach stem from her own personal experiences. In her first year as a real estate agent, she made $117.92. Looking at herself, she realized that the way she was presenting herself to clients was the barrier that was keeping her from making sales. By modifying her mannerisms and the way that she was listening to and connecting with her clients, she was able to go on to become a member of the Two Million Dollar Club.
However, she didn’t keep her success to herself. As a part of the recruitment and new hire training team for her real estate firm, she was able to coach others to successful starts in the industry. From there, opportunities presented themselves for her to leave the sales industry and become a full-time image coach. Starting with individual clients, she grew her business by investing in the success of others.
The authenticity and honesty she brought to her coaching relationships allowed her to win ever larger clients and corporate contracts. In 2009, her business was named as the MBEIC Minority Supplier of the Year, the latest of several awards marking her success as a woman of Asian descent in the personal coaching industry. In a recent interview with DiversityPlus, she shared some of the highlights of her business and some of the ways that investing in a coaching relationship holds dividends for both sides.
Building Individual to Group Connections
One of the biggest challenges that Wildermuth sees for clients comes in building meaningful connections with the critical groups in their lives. These critical groups can be business peers, senior management, or customer groups. Without the right blend of visual, verbal, and vocal elements, these connections are lost.
With Wildermuth’s help, clients can help themselves and help their organizations. She works to get clients focused on strengthening what they do well and helping themselves modify their style to connect with others on a higher level so that they can be confident in all situations. Her ability to help clients change the one or two little things they are doing that holds them back from success stems from her own experiences, allowing her to be direct but compassionate in her advice.
Perception management is critical for her clients. Whether they are trying to win over new clients or simply instill confidence with senior management about their talents, knowing how to “own the room” and present the right image is something clients develop when working with an image coach like Wildermuth. She also partners with other personal coaching and wellness specialists including psychologists to ensure her firm can link clients with every resource they need to maximize their potential and win the perception game for success.
Leveraging Technology for Personal Representation
Another element of the coaching provided by Wildermuth’s firm includes coaching for multimedia presence and connections. In the modern world, technology is vital for both personal and corporate representation. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook profiles can provide valuable platforms for expressing the services and personality of the business or the individual.
This is why readers can find Anna SooWildermuth on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and on her blog at www.personalimagesinc.com. She also uses Skype as a coaching tool, allowing her to maintain connections with her clients for coaching even when time and distance would otherwise present challenges. Thus, she wholly endorses responsible technology use as a tool for clients and coaches alike.
With her clients, multimedia coaching in social media platform use can help ensure that these technology platforms are value added activities. For example, Wildermuth believes that LinkedIn should be used by all professionals, and it should be updated at least weekly with image appropriate material.
Expanding Coaching for Minority Clients
During our interview, Wildermuth expressed her belief that minority clients can especially benefit from coaching. Since many minority businesses are entrepreneurial, they have their own way of doing things and they are not always interested in having coaching. However, having an ally come in with an outsider’s view of what the organization is doing can allow minority firms to see how they are being perceived in the market.
With coaching, minority and entrepreneurial clients have the opportunity to see if they are projecting their self-perceptions and intentions in the marketplace. A good coach who is invested in the success of the business can help bridge gaps and take the business to the next level of success. Polishing interpersonal skills, making small changes in style, and learning to listen to others in the right way to build client connections can make the personal coaching experience something that pays off in market share, corporate and personal confidence, and the ability to present themselves and their firm well.
Sometimes insight can be as simple as a video camera. Wildermuth likes to get clients on camera and then presents them with their own image, asking if what is coming across is truly the desired image of the organization or the person in question. From there, areas for improvement in sales scripts, outfitting, personal tics, and more can be identified to help move the bar higher for the organization.
Creating Hope, Creating Balance
One of the trends Wildermuth sees in the current business environment is that people are worn out and tired. Clients who sense that there are no hope is Wildermuth’s biggest challenge. Clients are looking for balance in their work-life relationships, but often they lack faith in their own ability to pick themselves up and make needed changes in their lives. She sees her job as helping her clients develop the hope, the balance, and the behaviors that they need in their lives.
“My clients always know that I am invested in them and on their side,” said Wildermuth, who wants to be seen as a strategic partner by her clients. Throughout the interview, she gave examples of clients who came to her with issues that boiled down to personal confidence and doubt in their ability to engage positively with others and know that others are listening to them. By working one-on-one in a coaching relationship, these clients were able to regain the internal balance and the hope of a successful outcome they needed to go out and face the world without fear.
Over the years, Anna SooWildermuth has had her investment in others paid back as she has seen clients go on to be extremely successful. This in turn enhances her own business relationships and opportunities, though she maintains that the money is always a secondary objective to seeing others succeed. With a positive outcome for both sides of the relationship, it’s no wonder that Anna SooWildermuth and Personal Images, Inc continue to do well in the coaching industry.
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