10 Years in Business–Tip #62: Are You Building Your Business Around Your Favorite Style?

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In my special report, What I Know For Sure: Lessons Learned in 10 Years of Business, I list 75 topic areas that I have bumped into over ten years. And every day in October, I will randomly choose one of the 75 and expound on it. So here’s today’s:

TIP #62 It is essential that you build your business model around how you want to spend your days. You’re working for yourself, not for someone else! You don’t have to be miserable. Do your work the way you like to do it. Be in front of the computer, if that’s how you like to spend your days. Be on the phone, coaching. Get out and teach and speak. Write. But spend it the way you want to spend it.

This is another one of those tips that can be glossed over because you think you are spending your day doing what you love. You love your niche and you love your target market. But are you spending the hours in the processes you love the most? Or are you spending them the way you’ve been told you “should”?

At some point, you need to take stock: are you coaching when you should really just be writing because that’s what you love and it’s where you want your future to go? (A past client of mine just had this aha-moment recently). Are you giving seminars to groups when you really just want to do one-on-one consulting or coaching? Are you giving keynotes, when you really want to be creating changes, which means more time with your audiences than keynotes ever provide? Are you coaching when deep-down you know you’re a teacher? Are you poring over the internet to get clients–engaging with social media–when you really need to be in-person with people?

Are you making choices out of a presumption of what you should do, rather than what you love to do?
It is essential that you build your business, (which means your days) around your favorite things to do.

I’m celebrating 10 years in business all through October with these blog posts, a party/call on Monday, October 10th–and special invitations to take my programs and get my products at deep discounts. Today’s offer: work with me privately. This RARELY happens. Go see the 3 business-building options I’m offering here.

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10 Years in Business–Tip #17: Your Business Must Be “Urgently Wanted”

October 4, 2011 By 1 Comment

In my special report, What I Know For Sure: Lessons Learned in 10 Years of Business, I list 75 topic areas that I have bumped into over ten years. And every day in October, I will randomly choose one of the 75 and expound on it. So here’s today’s:

TIP # 17: What you offer MUST be “urgently” wanted. Period. Unless you don’t require much income. A product or program is urgently wanted only by those with an urgent want to alleviate a problem, or experience a fantasy.

This is the look you want on your customers’ faces. Sheer exaltation when they have what you offer in their hands. You don’t have to be Apple, or offer something as world-altering as an iPhone, but you do want to elicit this look.

So, what do you feel that way over? Anything that is going to 1) bring you unadulterated joy and/or 2) dramatically uplevel the quality of your life and/or 3) enhance your status.

What has to be there in the product/program for you to feel so elated? 1) Certainty in its quality; 2) Clarity that you’re getting more value than you’re paying; 3) A true love for it (i.e. some warm and fuzzy emotional connection).

When this is there, they urgently want what you’ve got.  This is true whether it’s a product or a program, of course.

Too many intellectual products and programs (books, CD’s, seminars, presentations, opt-in gifts, etc.) are not urgently wanted. They’re not “Brain-Sticky”–compelling, original and memorable–but the authors think they are and are confounded as to why they have few clients.

Following the logic above, then, it is essential that you design all of your intellectual property around the needs and fantasies of your market. Make sure that they:

  1. Will bring them great joy
  2. Improve the quality of their life
  3. Enhance their status
  4. Have obvious quality–in other words, tangible, concrete, WANTED results
  5. Give FAR more than the ticket-price would ever reveal
  6. Enable your market to feel confident, capable, smarter, prettier, sexier–whatever they want SO much that it evokes powerful emotions in them.

Maybe you could go back to your past clients and ask them to tell you how your programs do these for them, or HOW they could in the future!

See today’s special offer–work with me privately at deep discounts. 3 topics for building a Brain-Sticky business.  http://inspiredleadershiptraining.com/10-year-offers .

 

 

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10 Years In Business–Tip #58: Get Organized in Your Business

October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In my special report, What I Know For Sure: Lessons Learned in 10 Years of Business, I list 75 topic areas that I have bumped into over ten years. And every day in October, I will randomly choose one of the 75 and expound on it. So here’s today’s:

Get organized!!! Be sure you are moving through
your day methodically. Learn about systems
management. Have a scheduled time every week
for weekly tasks, and every day for daily tasks.
Sounds boring as hell and it is, but it will save
your life.

Do you recognize these pitfalls of being unorganized as an entrepreneur?  1) Losing vitally important notes; 2) Forgetting a commitment you had; 3) Not keeping in regular contact with your clients–and losing money that’s right there on the table for you; 4) Not keeping up to date on your bookeeping; 5) Constantly working because you don’t have a system that balances your work and life.

I have by no means refined the art and science of being fully organized, but I highly recommend that you hire several people to help you: first, a project manager–someone who can oversee your entire business and everything that must get done, and then help you get it done! Having someone who LIKES to manage the many projects on your plate is the best thing you can do for yourself.  Then, a client relationship expert who will set up a system for you to reach out to clients on a regular basis. If you don’t have a system where you reach out to both prospects and clients every week–do you think you will? No, you’ll make something else a priority when nothing else should be–your prospects and clients are your lifeblood!  Then, of course, I recommend hiring a marketing manager, who can get all of your social media out on time–or else it probably won’t–and help you with your sales letters and other promotions. And then, of course, there’s a virtual assistant to do the “grunt” work that you shouldn’t spend your time on.

Get all 75 tips PLUS an invitation to join me in celebrating 10 years on a free call October 10th, PLUS much more! http://inspiredleadershiptraining.com/10Years/report/

 

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10 Years in Business–Tip #44: Stop TELLING and Start Asking

October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In my special report, What I Know For Sure: Lessons Learned in 10 Years of Business, I list 75 topic areas that I have bumped into over ten years. And every day in October, I will randomly choose one of the 75 and expound on it. So here’s today’s:

#44 STOP TELLING. Ask questions. Demolish your urge to be “smarter” than another; to appear wiser and more together or to be right by telling them what to do or what’s best. Your job as a teacher, expert, mentor is to assist in transformation. No one will act because of a directive from you. They will shift because they feel it in them to act. And that will happen in a fraction of the time…if you remove the “period” from the end of your commentary and insert a question mark.

This is one of my favorites because it’s become so obvious to me over the years how committed most people are to telling people what to do. I’ve got more people telling me what to do in my personal life than anyone asking me powerful questions so that I arrive at the answer myself. Likewise, I have found very few coaches who can do this with me well, so finding a good coach has been challenging. I won’t say that they don’t ask questions, but they don’t know what kind to ask, how to frame them (a great question is very carefully crafted), or when and how often to ask them.

Perhaps some examples are in order for how this plays out in daily business conversation. A prospect writes to you because she finds a reply of yours, to one of her emails, offensive.  You can write her back and “tell her” why you chose to write what you did, or you can write her back and ask her to share more of her experience with you. Or better yet, get on the phone and ask her that question, as well as, “What would you have wanted me to say?”

A client is not performing to the standards you both expect. You could “tell her” or “remind” her of the standards, and even what you think she could do to improve…OR you could ask her “What is happening in your life that has you not following through on our agreements?”

It is in telecalls and virtually all other teaching venues when the urge to “tell and be important” raises its ugly-duckling head the most. Rather than tell, tell, tell, your theories, theses, proofs, data, and stories…ASK the audience: what do you think is coming next? What kind of studies do you think were done on this in the 1920’s? What are you seeing here that maybe others missed? Do you see a correlation between this and that? How would you have felt if you’d lost your nerve like that? What do you want to take forward from this?

It seems like one of the least enlightening of all of the 75 tips, doesn’t it? At first-blush. Especially if you’re already a coach. “I ask plenty of questions!” you say.  But I dare you to listen to how you communicate and see how often you  “make a statement” rather than turn it into a question. Improv troupes have a game where the players must ask each other only questions while they keep a fluid and logical conversation flowing. You can take an Improv class, but real life is a better training ground.  Go ahead. I dare you! ASK, DON’T TELL!

Get all 75 tips PLUS an invitation to join me in celebrating 10 years on a free call October 10th, PLUS much more! http://inspiredleadershiptraining.com/10Years/report/

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