2006 News In Review

In this Issue:

President’s News

I chose to travel less this year so I could enjoy all the special events my daughter’s senior year will bring. This made it possible to participate in several international phone-and-web-based training programs: Product Factory (PF), Web Traffic School (TS) and Book Yourself Solid (BYS). There, I learned how to create e-courses, tele-seminars, web seminars, on-line audio/video resources, improve the PTC website and build better relationships with parents and family professionals worldwide.

These programs also made use of my strength as a group facilitator. I won the Outstanding Leadership Award for PF2, was invited to be a team leader for PF3 and TS1, led my team to the Outstanding PF4 Team Award, and was asked to be the Team Leader’s Team Leader for BYS.

I have learned so much about building a business and integrity-based, client-focused marketing techniques in the past year, that I will be planning a major business expansion in 2007. I am working with a coach, Rosemary Davies-Janes, who is helping me decide what I want to do and how it will get done. Expect to see exciting changes in 2008!
Most recently, PTC became an affiliate agency with the National Effective Parenting Initiative, which advocates, celebrates and promotes effective parenting and parenting education. I also volunteered to serve on the Advisory Board, which will provide new networking connections and opportunities to impact the field of parent education.

PTC encourages every parent and family professional to support NEPI by:

  1. Signing a petition supporting effective parenting and parent education.

  2. Encouraging all the parents and family-friendly organizations you know to sign this important petition, too, including:

    a. Parent educators & instructors, coaches, and their families and friends.

    b. Administrators and directors of parenting programs, resource centers, and their staffs and families.

    c. Parents who have taken or are currently taking parenting classes, workshops, seminars, or who are involved with a parenting or family resource program.

    d. The children of those parents.

For more information, go to: http://www.effectiveparentingusa.org/ 
 

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Parents Toolshop® News

Programs & Schedules

Jody continues to teach local parenting classes, statewide continuing education workshops for foster parents and social service professionals, and several private/contract parenting classes and speaking engagements each quarter.

PTC is scheduling monthly parenting tele-seminars for 2007. Please complete a very short survey about times you'd like to meet and topics you’d like to discuss. Complete the survey by Jan. 5, 2007 to receive 2 FREE Holiday Gifts. (There is a different survey for Toolshop® Graduates. See below.)

Jody is constantly developing new workshops and hopes to reproduce those in a variety of ways, such as short reports, interactive programs, video PowerPoint presentations with audio, audio recordings with handouts, and through tele-seminars. If you are on the Parents Toolshop® mailing list, we’ll let you know when these are available.

Jody is committed to increased communication in 2007 with the parents and professionals who support PTC. While she doesn’t want to communicate too often and appear in the mailbox more than desired, she recognizes that yearly or even quarterly communication is simply insufficient to keep PTC supporters informed and provide them with the support they want. As always, we have a double-opt-in process to assure compliance with best e-mail practices and a stringent privacy policy to ensure our subscribers contact information is never shared with anyone. Period.

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PTC Website

Through Web Traffic School, we optimized the PTC website to connect better with our visitors. Since the PTC website is massive --- over 400 pages of information and resources for parents and family professionals --- it was impossible to optimize each page by the end of the eight-week class. We only changed about 3% of the pages, but even with just that small effort, we got impressive results:

  • Before Traffic School, the PTC site was so unknown Alexa couldn’t even find it to rank it! Other sites had rankings in the 2 or 3 million range, so the PTC site was even lower than that! We would have been happy with a 1 million ranking, but after Traffic School, the PTC site had an Alexa ranking of 347,401!

  • The number of unique visitors to the PTC website increased 25% from 4,529 to 6,310.

  • The number of visitors who purchased a resource increased by a whopping 80%!

  • After optimizing one page with a FREE 30-page e-book called E.S.P. (Effective Single Parenting) for Single, Divorced and Widowed Parents, that page came up in the number one spot on Google! To date, over 200 people have gotten this free e-book.

  • We added a FREE 14-page excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Parents Toolshop® book so people who take the Parenting Style Quiz can better understand what their scores mean. We are now getting dozens of opt-ins and reprint requests from organizations and publications worldwide.

    We also added more free resources and bonus reports, including:
    • Links to research about the negative long-term consequences of using Behavior Modification techniques and a FREE BONUS handout from the workshop, "Get Cooperation Without Squeezing the Juice Out of Kids," so parents know how to foster internal motivation instead.
    • FIVE new articles at the main articles page, which now has a sortable table, so you can read the list in alphabetical order, by topic/skill area or by age focus. (Jody figured this out and taught the Traffic School instructors how to do it!)

    There is a huge file folder of ideas for changes we plan to make to the PTC website. Our goal is to make these changes in 2007. Then, when the big PTC expansion happens in 2008, it will be ready for more traffic!

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Ambris Publishing News

In 2006, Toolshop® and Universal Blueprint® became registered trademarks of Parents Toolshop® Consulting, Ltd. In 2007, we will be seeking a major publisher to not only publish a shorter, in-all-bookstores-nationwide edition of The Parents Toolshop® book, but reproduce and enhance the entire Ambris Publishing product line and parent education curriculum.
 

Integrity Marketing® News

By the time the Integrity Marketing website had finally been designed (an extremely frustrating experience with The Logo Loft that almost led to a lawsuit!), Jody was co-facilitating similar training programs through Product Factory and Book Yourself Solid. It didn’t seem to make sense to create new programs and resources from scratch when these were a proven success! In 2007, Jody will be discussing with Michael Port, author of the Book Yourself Solid book, whether she can provide a Book Yourself Solid program specifically designed for parent educators, therapists and coaches.

Until then, she has received permission to post articles she’s written for the NCFR CFLE newsletter on the www.IntegrityMarketing.org website. They will be posted in 2007. Jody will also add some more independent study resources, so parent educators can get some of this valuable information before comprehensive tele-seminars and web seminars are available.

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Parents Toolshop® Graduate News

Welcome to the 44 new Parents Toolshop® Graduates from 2006 Dayton-area classes! We’re glad you are part of our parenting network and appreciate all the wisdom, support and encouragement you offer other parents...and your enthusiastic commitment to Parents Toolshop®.

While the Graduate benefits improved this year...

  • FREE 30-minutes of phone consultation per year (increased from 15-minutes)
  • 50% off consultation fees (phone/home) (value doubled, from $50 to $100)
  • 50% off Toolshop® classes taught by the author, Jody Johnston Pawel, LSW, CFLE
  • UNLIMITED LIFETIME 10% DISCOUNT on any programs and resources purchased on-line. (Increased to unlimited lifetime discount)

...we are always looking for more ways to support and gift our graduates.

We are still trying to figure out the most convenient, informative way to continue supporting our Toolshop® Graduates. We didn’t get much participation in the in-person support groups and many graduates have moved, so we offered monthly tele-seminars, but they were poorly attended, too. We are sincerely interested in hearing what kind of support Toolshop® graduates would find most helpful. If you are a graduate who did not complete a survey in early December, 2006, please complete the Grad survey by Jan. 5, 2007 and get 2 FREE Holiday Gifts to thank you for your time.

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Toolshop® Group Facilitator News

This year, Parents Toolshop® reached a new milestone, with instructors worldwide:

Selena Dyke has a B.A. in Psychology and Social Work and is a Certified Life Skills Coach. Selena was a Guidance Counselor in Jamaica, working with children, adolescents and parents at a private school. She recently moved to the Bahamas to accept a position as a parent educator. Selena also offers teacher professional workshops in classroom and behavior management .

We have also been talking to a potential applicant from Puerto Rico who has offered to translate The Parents Toolshop® book into Spanish!

We want to offer more and better support to our instructors, so we will be starting many new and enhanced programs and support services for our instructors in 2008 as part of our worldwide expansion. These will help ensure each instructor is equipped with the knowledge, skills and confidence to get their classes booked solid! In the meantime, we really want to hear from our instructors what kind of support would be most meaningful to them and the most convenient way to provide this. The monthly tele-conferences didn’t seem to hit the mark, so tell us what would! Just send an e-mail to Jody.


Thank you for your ongoing support
of The Parents Toolshop!

Stay tuned for more exciting news in 2007!

 

Jody Johnston Pawel, LSW, CFLE

Read more newsletters at: http://www.parentsToolshop®. com/HTML/newsletter.htm

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