The Best of 2020: Most Popular Articles, 10 Most Loved Free Resources, Top Products & More!

Just like you, we had a very full and challenging 2020! In preparation for our 2021 goal-setting we reviewed our successes, products, articles and blog posts for the year - which we share below.

I can thoroughly recommend doing something similar for your business, we even have some questions to help you do just that here.

It's not just interesting to review the past year, it's empowering and uplifting to realise that we achieved much more than we remember. Creating this article has become an essential part of our annual review.

And while COVID definitely "threw a spanner in the works", we worked hard - and kept going. I hope you enjoy - and get inspired by - the summary below.

2020 was a busy year - here are just a few highlights!

Facebook Group Manifesto

Achievements

• Our free tools were downloaded 211,140 times!
• If you read our newsletter, you are now part of a community of 56,000 newsletter readers from 175 different countries. It's exciting that coaching is now so international.
• We were named again as a Top 60 Coaching Blog & Website for Professional Coaches for 2020 (we're at number 5!)
• We posted over 98 articles written specifically for coaches!
• The "Coaches Helping Coaches" Facebook Group grew to over 16,000 coaches! It's a highly active group with lots of questions answered and support offered! We put a lot of effort into ensuring that the conversation flows - and promotions don't swamp the group news-feed. We also created a Manifesto for the Group (pictured right).

Supporting You

• You asked for more offers and sales. And we know it's hard to get started with your coaching business! So as well as our popular Annual Fireworks Sale giving you 35% off Sitewide, we introduced a brand new Spring Sale, plus we extended our Cyber Sale to 9 Days offering 25% off Sitewide for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and beyond.
• We also now offer great savings on three products per month!
• We simplified our newsletter look and feel - to make our emails easier to scan and read. We also (finally) made our newsletters mobile friendly!
• In 2020 we added 1 new Free Coaching Tool to our Free Resources Page. Which means we now offer 30 Free Coaching Tools & Exercises. Plus see below!

Plus $15,000 of Free Training Giveaways

• We gave away five WBECS "Executive Speed Learner" Packages (valued at $1497 each), each training offering over 160 CCEUs!
• We also gave away one ACE (Foundations of Great Coaching) Coach Training Package (valued at $2,997) with 15 CCEUs.
• We gave away three Marcia Reynolds "Breakthrough Coaching " Packages (valued at $1497 each), each training offering 37.5 CCEUs.

A team pic taken in 2019 before Marcus joined us!

The Coaching Tools Company Team

• Mary Turcott keeps expanding her role as Operations Manager for The Coaching Tools Company. She was instrumental in keeping the business on track during a challenging year, and freed Emma-Louise up so she could launch Fierce Kindness.
• The marvellous Marcus Diaz continued as our Social Media Coordinator - you may have seen him posting and participating in the Coaches Helping Coaches Facebook Group. Marcus expanded his role in 2020 to include managing all our Social Media Accounts - including reaching our goal of 10,000 Instagram followers!
• Emma-Louise presented her webinar: What does it REALLY take to Grow a Successful Coaching Business? to groups in Australasia, the UK and the USA. She also launched her newest project Fierce Kindness: Personal Development for people who make a difference - or want to. There is much more to come, so watch this space!
  

  Marcus Diaz 🙂

• Natasha Kong is our resident graphic designer and reached the milestone of 5 years with The Coaching Tools Company 🙂 As well as helping design the new blog page, she has enjoyed creating many beautiful new graphics and infographics including the 10 Most Powerful Coaching Questions Infographic, beautiful graphics for International Women's Day, these Resilience Quotes and much, much more!
• Duncan Elsey continues to be our essential technical expert and advisor. Not only does he answer our "Help, my _____ has stopped working", but he also works hard to maintain and continuously improve the website. And this year he also masterminded our move to a new newsletter provider, and implemented both our new Blog page design and Coaching Events page.
• We hired an editor! With so many articles to edit, we finally hired someone to help. We were very happy to welcome our newest auxiliary team member Laura Cappello-Bromling of Elusive Beast Editing.
• In addition, as a team, we created 3 new "Essential Guides"for Coaches:
  

  Wendy

  1. SMART Goals - Complete Guide for Coaches (plus Special Report .PDF)
  2. Coaching Quotes: How & Why to Use Them with 21 Inspirational Coaching Quotes and More!
  3. The GROW Model Explained with Coaching Questions, Graphic, Tips (Plus Special Report .PDF)
• And last but by no means least, we really appreciate the contributions of the wonderful Wendy Buckingham as volunteer moderator in the Facebook Group. She strives to expand the reach - and maintain the integrity of - the coaching profession for all.

Leading from the Heart and Living our Values

Reshmma

• With the COVID pandemic taking over our lives in 2020:
  • Emma-Louise wrote an Open letter for coaches to inspire coaches to do what they can during the pandemic.
  • And we created a COVID Care Package: (Free) Resources for Coaches in April which we continued to add to and expand throughout the year.
• We donated over $15,000 to charities we believe are important in the world! These charities included supporting the homeless, mental health, black youth and more! Watch for our article in February for more info.
  
• You met 10 more coaches in our Coach Features, where we helped you get to know your fellow coaches! Reshmma Gulati and Bianca Stawiarski (pictured) were the most popular and were shared a total of 396 times!
  

  Bianca

• We put together 3 Free Webinars just for Coaches, on helpful topics:
  1. 10 Lessons Webinar with Emma-Louise! What does it REALLY take to Grow a Coaching Business?
  2. 6 Best Practices of Online Group Coaching Webinar with Jennifer Britton!
  3. 3 Steps to Get Coaching Clients Online with Marketing Expert Cindy Schulson!

Here are the Top 10 Articles/Graphics from 2020!

First, here are the Top 3 infographics 'articles' in 2020:

1. BE BOLD! 10 Awesome Ways to Be Bolder in Life (194 shares)
2. Live Your Best Life - Hire a Coach (104 shares)
3. 10 Savvy Ways to Be More Confident (61 shares)

And here are the 10 most popular articles from 2020:

Choosing our "Top 10" articles is not an exact science! We look at the number of social shares from the blog, but also the number of article comments, shares and comments when an article is posted on Facebook - and also the positive emails we receive about an article!

1. COVID Care Package: (Free) Resources for Coaches
2. The GROW Model Explained with Coaching Questions, Graphic, Tips (Plus Special Report .PDF)
3. SMART Goals - Complete Guide for Coaches (plus Special Report .PDF)
4. The Top 10 Coaching Books to Make You a Better Coach!
5. 8 Hurdles Women Leaders Face & How to Coach Them Effectively by Delaney Tosh
6. Power up Your Goals: 9 Ways to Get Inspired and Stay Motivated! by Wendy Buckingham
7. How to Challenge Your Clients For Breakthrough Results! by Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC
8. FREE Coaching Niche Finder Tool: What Makes You Awesome?
9. 4 Ways to Journal for Change, Healing and Growth by Lynda Monk MSW, RSW, CPCC
10. 5 Ways Coaches Can Lighten Energy in Difficult Times by Sarah Evans, MCC

The 7 Most Loved Free Resource Downloads of 2020:

This is more of an exact science! Our Top 10 Free Resources generated 105,814 downloads and the total number of free resource downloads was 211,140.

Over 30 Free Coaching Tools & Exercises!

Here are the Top 7 Free Resources downloaded in 2020:

1. Wheel of Life Template with Instructions (downloaded 21,133 times)
2. 21 Questions to Extraordinary Goal-Setting (12,646 times)
3. Intake Session TEMPLATE Checklist (11,133 times)
4. 25 Power Questions to Identify Strengths (10,342 times)
5. Action Brainstorming Worksheet (9,630 times)
6. BLANK Coaching Wheel (9,463 times)
7. Understanding The Why of Your Goals (9,181 times)
8. 37 Coaching Questions to Liberate Your Clients! (7,875 times)

And our Most Popular 5 Products in 2020:

Finally, here are our most popular sellers from last year:

• 1st place Welcome Pack Toolkit - Get started with a new client.
• 2nd place Coaching Tools & Exercises MEGAPack! - All our life and career coaching tools and toolkits in one great product!
• 3rd Renew YOU, Love Your Life! Coaching Program - a 3 month life coaching program including guides & marketing materials.
• 4th Small Business Coaching Toolkit - 30 great coaching tools in helpful areas with guide.
• 5th Vision & Goals Setting Toolkit - 9 awesome goal-setting tools & exercises (currently on sale plus a bonus tool!)

Followed by our Career Coaching Toolkit - 7 great career coaching tools, then 21 1/2 Workshop Icebreakers & Exercises, Balance & Self Care, Coaching Agreement Sample Template, to round out our Top 10!

I hope you enjoyed these highlights and summary! For our latest articles visit the Coaching Blog or go here to Sign-up for our newsletter!

We'd love to hear your 2020 highlights - share yours in the comments below!