How Do People Find Me?
Do they even know I exist?
How do people find me for accent modification instruction?
Word-of-Mouth
Many people said they didn’t know this kind of accent coaching existed until someone told them about me. Word-of-mouth has been the best way people have found me. That’s been a wonderful way to connect with new people. The one drawback is that it’s common for people to want to keep their self-improvement goals private. It’s a personal choice for people to make and they may not want to ask around and let everyone know they want to work on or that they are working on their speaking skills. That’s totally understandable but it does slow down the word-of-mouth connections. When my current and former clients refer people to me, I offer specials to both sides because I’m grateful for such a valuable connection.
Suggestions From Friends and Colleagues
I’ve had people ask me what’s the best way to mention my services to a colleague at work because they want to offer help but don’t want to offend the person. If you are going to mention it to someone, you should already have a good working relationship with them so they know it’s coming from understanding and support. Comparing this specific type of speech coaching to public speaking classes is a good way to point out that everyone has room to improve speaking skills, including native speakers in all languages. It’s common for people who want to advance their career to hire personal coaches for management, communication, and leadership skills and this is one more specific area of spoken communication.
Professional Development Opportunity From Employers
When it’s a supervisor who is interested in finding coaching for an employee it works out well when they offer it as a professional development opportunity and pay for it. In these situations, I always tell the supervisor that the employee shouldn’t have to decide if it’s something they want to do until after they meet me for a consultation. They should feel comfortable talking to me before they ever decide if they want to work with me. In every instance when someone has contacted me about providing private instruction for an employee it’s because that supervisor or employer sees the potential in the employee that they want to help develop. It has always come from a positive approach to invest in the development of an employee that they want to keep and see a bright future for. It gives me hope that there really are good people and places to work for out there in the world.
Employee Request for Professional Development Funding
Of all the professional fields that I have worked with for accent modification coaching, I think the tech industry in general has been the easiest. I wish more industries were as quick as even very large tech companies are to respond to employees’ requests for funding for personal development training. Many of the employees have funds they need to use or lose by the end of the year so I get a lot of requests in December for lessons that can be paid for now and then start in January or February. The proposal for services that I write for companies never explicitly states “accent modification” because that’s too much detail. Sure, I’m getting into the details of pronunciation and prosody when I teach, but it’s all under the umbrella of “professional communication” when I write the proposal because it’s still a personal choice for that individual to let others know exactly what they are working on.
Sharing
I have put a lot of information on my website explaining what accent modification is, who it is for, and who I am so people can learn about this specific type of speech coaching for themselves or to share with others. I also created an information course that describes each of the speech features that are part of accent modification instruction.
What is Accent Modification? - Info Course
If you’d like to meet with me to ask questions or have a free consultation, you can schedule that on my calendar.