Company update: Awarenow is now Profi 🎉

It’s been a long time in the making, but we’re finally able to share our new brand name with you: Profi 

Starting on day one, our awarenow team was fully and wholeheartedly focused on serving the health & wellness industry. But from those beginnings, more and more coaches, consultants (CPAs, accountants, lawyers and other types), therapists and trainers have organically discovered our platform, and are using it for their businesses. This motivated us to reexamine what we are as a platform and is ultimately what called us to further expand our global mission and rebrand our name.

We’ve figured out (and our research confirms this) that a professional (short: pro or profi) is a precise word used to describe a talented, hard-working and dedicated person who’s devoted their life, mind and heart to helping others by providing their professional services. We view Profi as a way to convey professionalism, profile, professional fit and of course profit. We don’t want to come off too salesy, but at the end of the day, your business has to be profitable to be sustainable. It’s all about balance, as we well know.

So with that, we are now officially operating under the Profi name! And we are just as committed as before to providing you, our profis, with an all-in-one operating platform that helps you manage and streamline your services. We want to free up your time from admin backlog management (profis only spend 41% of their time helping people) and help you effectively scale your professional services business - so you can help more people.

Our goal is to, at a minimum, double the time you spend helping people and maximize your impact.

This is the start of a new era for our Profi community, company and the professional services market! 

So what changes for you?

You get all of the upside, and none of the downside that our fast-growing technology solution has to offer. You've put your trust in us to streamline your business operations and service delivery, and we are going to make sure we continue to earn that trust. The only thing that changes is our ability to amplify our vision of supporting more professionals who support others - coaches, consultants, therapists, trainers and more. Now you can finally switch hats from office management to holistic service provider, doing less administrative work and helping more people.  

Other than a new name, nothing else changes at this point for our beloved community of customers. You can still log in and access all your services and clients in one place: https://app.profi.io/auth?signIn=true If you’ve bookmarked the awarenow platform or website, no worries, you’ll get automatically redirected to the new domain.
Under the hood, there are a lot of exciting things happening right now. We’re welcoming Adam Miller on board, scaling the team and ramping up our processes. All of this will enable us to speed up new feature rollouts, provide a better user experience and add more value to you and your clients. 

And that’s just the beginning! We’re very excited about what’s to come and we hope you are too! You can learn more about this change and what it means to you on our fresh blog.

Product update: Outlook Calendar integration

Company updates aside, we’ve delivered a big, frequently requested feature this month. In addition to Google Calendar, you can now sync your Profi sessions with your Outlook Calendar!

To do this, just go to the Calendar sync settings on your Calendar dashboard and connect your Outlook Office 365 account with a few clicks of the button. Voila! All your future Profi sessions will get automatically added to your Outlook Calendar. Also, all your Outlook Calendar events will be visible in your Profi Calendar.

The next most asked feature is multiple calendars sync and it's coming soon!

Product updates:

1. Booking & Calendar:

• Set buffer time before and after sessions
• Booking widget steps indication & time format
• Auto-approve new bookings
• New calendar event cards: more info + invite participants
• Automated Google Calendar invites for you and clients

2. Video Conferencing: Screen sharing and participant names

Product updates:

1. Booking & Calendar

• Set buffer time between sessions

With so many online meetings taking place every day, we’ve learned to live with our calendar’s chaos and Zoom burnouts.
Taking small steps to organize your day a bit more effectively never hurts, though.

Treat yourself to those much-needed breaks in-between appointments by setting a time buffer before and after your awarenow sessions.

Additionally, you can include padding for your synced Google Calendar events!

• Booking widget steps indication & time format

Booking widget has seen a large number of improvements that will instantly increase your client booking rates.

First of all, clients now see their service booking progress indication and can easily go back to previous steps if needed.

The 24-hour format has been added as well so that clients can check out your open slots in their preferred time format.

• Auto-approve new bookings

To save up time on manually approving each client session request, you can enable auto-approvals.
This way, whenever a new session request from a client comes in, it’ll get auto-approved with no further action required from either side.

You can set this up on a per-service basis which ultimately helps you prioritize and qualify session requests much faster.

For example, for existing clients, you can have a dedicated session type where all session requests get auto-approved. That’s especially helpful when you organize group sessions.

For all new clients though, you might want to create a different session where you manually approve/decline each discovery session request. This way, you can consider if they’re worth your time and/or you require additional client info (that’s where forms come in handy) before approving.

• New calendar event cards: more info + invite participants

We’ve made it much easier for you to understand what’s going on with your awarenow calendar events and perform some quick useful actions.

Namely, you can now invite new event participants right from an event card, as well as copy a session page link, join your session room and session chat.

• Automated Google Calendar invites for you and clients    

Another mighty feature that will help you decrease your no-show rate is automated calendar invites.

You and your clients will now receive Google calendar invites to new sessions via email if you/your clients don’t have a Google Calendar synced with the awarenow account.

2. Video Conferencing: Screen sharing and participant names

If you’re primarily using awarenow video conferencing or you were just looking for another reason to switch from Zoom to the built-in tool, we have some amazing news for you. You can now share your screen with other participants!

Also, we’ve added participants’ names indication (finally!) to the awarenow session room.

Stay tuned for more video conferencing features that are coming soon.

 

Product updates:

1. Packages - Create & sell a set of sessions at once

2. Programs:

• Deliver an interactive learning experience: content, sessions, and follow-up questions
• Invite fellow instructors and select module completion options

3. Widget:

• Add programs and packages to your widget
• Get more form conversions at the time of booking

4. Languages:

• Add new languages to your profile
• Localize ‘Our Community’ page

Product updates

1. Packages - Create & sell a set of sessions at once

Selling multiple sessions at once just got much easier with Packages.

You can set any number of individual, group sessions in a package that should be used within a certain period of time.

As with any service, you get an automatically generated, conversion-optimized landing page which enables your clients to easily enroll, pay for your package (one-time or flexible recurring fee), and schedule sessions.

It’s super easy to track your clients’ progress through your package: see how many sessions they have completed, how many are left, and schedule new ones.

<Create your first package>

2. Programs

Programs got a few long-awaited updates you will absolutely love!

• Deliver an interactive learning experience: content + sessions + follow-up questions

The biggest program update is what we call an interactive learning path or experience. Now you can not only add self-paced content as a program module, but also sessions and follow-up questions!

Your learners see what’s inside the program, modules they have already completed, and keep progressing through the next ones.

The new program module structure is truly a game-changer for every provider who wants to offer their clients a blended learning experience while saving loads of time on repeat scheduling, booking, billing, and progress tracking.

Now it’s up to you to design a perfect learning path for your audience!

<Create your new blended program now>

• Invite fellow instructors and select module completion options

Want to team up and deliver programs together with other people you know? Just invite them to create an awarenow account (if they don’t have one yet) and add them to a module topic they’re experts in. Invited instructors can easily modify their modules and will be notified of all activities within those.

For each of the modules, you can also specify an optimal completion option that works best for you, your instructor, and your audience.

3. Widget

Your widget got some love too this month.

• Add programs and packages to your widget

In addition to the ability to display your individual and group sessions, you can also make your packages and programs available for booking through your widget by making them public.

• Get more form conversions at the time of booking

Want more people to fill out your forms?

If you choose to display a form at the time of first/each booking, now it will be shown to a client right after they select a time slot (or pay, if the session is not free) providing a more optimal experience for your clients and more information about them for you.

4. Languages

• Add new languages to your profile    

New providers and their clients are signing up for awarenow from all over the world every minute.
If you’re Romanian, from the Philippines, or based in beautiful Portugal, you’d be excited to learn that you can now specify your favorite country’s language as your primary or secondary one in your profile.

• Localize ‘Our Community’ page

For corporate plan admins, we’ve added the ability to configure your ‘Our community’ page content for visitors that speak other languages to provide them with a better-optimized experience from the get-go.

Feature updates:

1. Schedule, Sell, and Run Group Sessions
2. Six question types in Forms
3. Add Installments payment option
4. Edit coach profiles’ privacy
5. Custom payment link

Content updates:

1. Top 7 Coaching Trends for 2021
2. Top 4 Mistakes Coaches Make
3. 6 Ways COVID Changed Coaching - Forever
4. 3 Ways to Scale Your Coaching Business by Adding Staff 
5. Content Marketing for Coaches: 4 Places to Post

Feature updates:

1. Schedule, Sell, and Run Group Sessions

When you have too many 1:1 sessions while courses aren’t the most intimate format for client engagement - group sessions are just the perfect middle-ground. Or an additional weapon in your services arsenal.

Just imagine having up to 50 of your clients/learners in one virtual room - that’s so 2020-ish!

You have so many group session options to play with:

• awarenow/zoom video conferencing
• Schedule just one group session or make it recurring
• Create a private group chat for group session participants only (that’s available before, during, and after the session)
• Easily have people register for it: share group session via link w/ a dedicated page & group session shows in your booking widget

2. Six question types in Forms

Do you want your clients to upload a recent photo when they fill in one of your intake forms? Easy!

What about getting their signature on your coaching contract? Just add a Signature field.

Also, you might want to check out the 4 tips we prepared for Client Intake Forms.

Six questions types available in Forms: Short answer, Long answer, Singe choice, Multiple Choice, File Upload, Signature.

3. Add Installments payment option

Do you want to make your Programs accessible without lowering your price? Who wouldn't?

You can now allow clients to pay in installments. One idea would be to incentivize full payments with a small discount, as in the example below.

Alternatively, if the program takes place over a longer period of time you can use the already existing Subscription/Membership option.

4. Edit coach profiles’ privacy

You can now easily select which profiles of your organization's coaches are public or private. Quite handy, we believe.

5. Custom payment link

Admins on the corporate plan can now specify a third-party service payment link - clients get redirected to it and pay to get access to a session or program. 

Content updates:

Top 7 Coaching Trends for 2021

Successful coaches know how important it is to be aware of trends affecting your clients’ business. Often, however, we’re too busy following their industry to make time to follow our own.  Fortunately, awarenow has an amazing community of expert coaches and industry observers who are happy to share their insight. We polled them - as well as a few outside resources who are authorities in their field - and came up with 7 key trends affecting the coaching industry for 2021. Read full article.

Top 4 Mistakes Coaches Make

As we head into the New Year, it’s a natural time for coaches to make resolutions and think about the future of their business. That said, even the best strategies and techniques can be undermined by issues in other aspects of the business. In talking with successful coaches, we’ve uncovered four key mistakes that many coaching businesses make that could thwart even the best plans. Read full article.

6 Ways COVID Changed Coaching - Forever

Obviously, coaching has changed during coronavirus. Now that vaccines seem to be on their way, it’s worth looking at what coaching will look like in a post-pandemic world. Which corona-based changes are temporary and which are permanent? What does the post-COVID world look like for coaches and how can we best prepare for it? Read full article.

3 Ways to Scale Your Coaching Business by Adding Staff

At a certain point, you can't keep growing your coaching business just by adding more clients - there isn't time. Read full article.

Content Marketing for Coaches: 4 Places to Post

One of the best ways to get more clients is for people to read or watch your content. If they like your approach, they’ll want to learn more about you.  However, this is easier said than done. How can coaches get their content posted in places where their ideal clients will see it? Read full article.

Thank you for being with us in 2020 and looking forward to co-creating together in 2021 and beyond.

Happy New Year!

1. Engage clients with Questionnaires & Prompts 2.0

We’ve combined welcome quizzes and journaling prompts into a single powerful tool: ‘Questionnaires & prompts’ (we’re still debating on what would a better name for it and happy to hear your suggestions).

With the unified Questionnaires & Prompts you can: Apply any automation conditions you want like who and when to send a questionnaire: at the time of each/first booking, after each/first session, 1 hour before each session, after joining a course, or even set a custom date parameter - the possibilities are practically endless) Ask different types of questions (open-ended, multiple-choice, as well as add the ‘other’ option) View all client responses in one place.

2. Programs are now part of Services

Another welcomed change which you may have already spotted is that Programs/Courses are now part of Services.

Services section is one of the most important ones on the awarenow platform and the one which will generate you the most revenue ;) We’ll be adding many more exciting add-ons to Services like Group sessions and Packages very soon to help you grow your practice faster.

3. SEO-optimize your Blog posts with URL Editing

As more and more coaches start to see how marketing can help them generate new clients, many of you start blogging and podcasting on awarenow. And with SEO being one of the key marketing channels, we’ve added the URL parameter to your blog posts.

You can now specify the URLs to better optimize your blog posts for search engines like Google and ultimately get more clients through organic search.

If you’re interested in learning more about the power of blogging for coaches, check out our recent piece on Turning Blog Readers Into Clients.

4. Free Webinar on ‘Storytelling for Coaches’

Good content marketing doesn’t exist without …? You guessed it, great storytelling.

With that, we’re really excited to announce and invite you to our first live webinar covering ‘Storytelling for Coaches’ taking place on November, 19 at 11 AM PST / 2 PM EST.

Our CMO Nick Benedict will be joined by Damon D’Amore, C-Suite Performance Specialist and Mentor at LegacyMentor to tell you more about the role of storytelling and its practical implications, especially in times of crisis.

Book your free webinar spot