10 Years of Business Lessons–Chapter 1: When It’s Time to Change Direction

Over the next 3 weeks, I will be commemorating my 10 years as an influential communication strategist in my second business–in the hopes that doing so will help you make more strategic decisions, avoid ditches and dead ends, move along much faster--and, overall, keep you inspired as you, too, traverse the winding and unpredictable road of self-employment.

It all began on February 27, 2007, when I launched Inspired Leadership Training with a 2-hour, free live event.

Well, no, I should back up.

It really began about 18 months earlier, when I attended The Millionaire Mind Intensive, then run by marketing and live event genius, T. Harv Eker. Over those 3 days, I fell in love with how I felt as an audience member, with how powerfully and effectively they engaged me and I wanted to learn how they did it!

That weekend, I enrolled in Eker’s Train the Trainer program—and once there, lost my heart to how they worked with audiences, through something called “accelerated learning.” A teacher deep down, I soaked up the many, many techniques educational science had developed on enthralling an audience and ensuring deep learning, then I registered for their higher-level certification course on the subject.

After five years of it, I was feeling uninspired working 1-1 as an empowerment coach, and tired of inconsistent sales, too, and so, it was right there at the certification course that I decided to change the trajectory of my career completely. Never mind that a non-fiction book I’d written was being considered by a trade publisher—I wanted nothing more now than to teach these techniques. I was done coaching. I wanted to educate and invoke the spirit of my minister father, a passionate and powerful orator.

As I considered my target market—something I’d failed to do with my coaching business—I considered the fact that the success I’d had as a coach had been due almost entirely to my public speaking. I knew that speaking was the most successful marketing strategy for any entrepreneur, and I decided that I wanted to help my fellow pack-leavers succeed at it.

I also knew that the accelerated learning techniques I was learning would set them apart from every other speaker out there. Not only were they effective, they were inspiring and empowering, something most presentations lack completely!

I quickly conceived the name of my new business: Inspired Leadership Training. Ten years later, it has only shifted slightly to Inspired Leaders’ Academy. I teach my clients now to choose a name that will last for years; mine has always stayed on-target, true to its purpose, and the tag line is as true today as ever: Revolutionizing the Way We Succeed.

So, I completed the certification course but I had a problem: I didn’t know why these accelerated learning techniques worked. Yes, K-12 educators had been implementing them successfully since the early 1970’s, but why? I went in search of answers and soon discovered “brain-based learning” and spent well over a year studying everything I could get my hands on about learning, memory and emotion in the brain.

By late 2006, I had developed my own curriculum for a live public speaking training centered around how the brain learns. The techniques were very similar to accelerated learning’s, but I was pleased to be able to call on hard neuroscience to explain why, for instance, an audience leader should ask constant questions, even rhetorical ones; have audiences verbalize rather than just listen—and why information must be delivered in a very particular sequence.

I named my proprietary formula—i.e. signature program--Secrets of Impact and Influence, and, modeling the way T. Harv Eker sold his trainings, I designed a free ‘teaser’ 2-hour live event to sell the for-sale, signature program.

Back then, this was a rare strategy, believe it or not! I had no idea when I began that within three years, free teleclasses would be all the rage on the internet, and a few years beyond that, free webinars. In February, 2007, this was a novel and successful strategy that I used for the next two years.

In the next installment, I’ll reveal how I marketed the 2-hour event and how the content was designed. Remember, it had to sell my (at the time) 1-day public speaking event. I had learned a lot from T. Harv Eker about selling from stage, and I brought those lessons to bear as I conceptualized my teaser event—the portal to my brand new business.

LESSONS: 

  1. Follow your intuition. If you fall in love with a new direction, follow it!
  2. Be smart: Choose a target audience and make sure there is a strong market for what you want to sell.
  3. Be creative: Make sure what you’re offering is unique in the marketplace! That it has a unique and proprietary ‘formula.’
  4. Be strategic: Conceive of a strategy for selling your proprietary formula (i.e. signature program)
  5. Choose a business name that suggests a theme or purpose and that you could be happy with for years. My work, though it has morphed over 10 years, is all about inspirational leadership. Another lesson: Don’t let an expert talk you out of your intuitive sense of your business name: I was told entrepreneurs don’t want to be leaders. Within 5years, everyone selling to entrepreneurs was encouraging them to be leaders. You may just be ahead of your time; trust your gut!

Is There an Inspired Thought Leader Inside of You?

Sixteen years ago, as legend has it, I read a book in six days and everything in my life changed. Upon finishing it, I knew that I needed to leave my marriage and to change the course of my career–writing novels–which I had adored.  I woke up from that book knowing I needed to do something that was more real and substantial than creating fictional plots and characters had been for me. The words that I said–in the privacy of my own head—were, ” I want to change the world.”

For two years, all dressed up with no where to go, I searched for the venue that would help me to do that and finally came upon coaching. It was not what it is today: no one had heard of it, no one understood it (I think most still don’t) and so it was wide-open terrain. I was passionate about it because I knew its empowering methodology could indeed change the world.

accelerated learning mapFive years later, at a seminar, I was captivated by a method of working with audiences derived from education science called “accelerated learning.” It was another life-changing few days, as I decided to leave coaching and immerse myself in learning everything I could about accelerated learning and brain-based learning. Eighteen months later, passionate and convicted, I launched my second business—Inspired Leaders’ Academy—with a new kind of public speaking training just for entrepreneurs, using these technologies. I knew that when used properly, this “new paradigm of audience leadership” could change the world.

It’s been many years since that launch and many more since my realization that I wanted to change the world, but the drive is as real and fresh in me as it was when I closed the cover of that book.  I still believe coaching can change the world; I know that leading audiences with the technology of brain-based-learning will change the world—and now I work with coaches and other experts to help them change the world with a third element: Thought leadership.

Here’s my conviction: No business will make it now without leaving the pack and standing far apart from everyone else. And the way coaches, consultants and other experts will do that is with a fresh, provocative, even radical, message that shatters the status quo. A thought leader message. It’s essential for survival, and the only option for changing the world.

But a thought leader message isn’t enough. I named my business Inspired Leaders’ Academy years ago because I knew to stand out, and to change the world, you must lead with inspiration.  The fact is, inspiration sells as no data, evidence, or sound intellectual arguments ever will. My father was a minister and I adapted his natural ability to inspire, so when I began leading my public speaking trainings and free events, I saw that truth in action: inspiration is the ultimate call-to-action.ShieldHighResVersion

So, to be successful and change the world, you can’t just have a thought leader message that is intellectually satisfying; you need the fire and passion of inspiration to move an audience to truly “hear” that message and make it their own. On the other hand, you cannot just have an inspirational message—heat and heart—without a solid idea that confounds common understanding, fries brain circuits and destroys conformist thinking. You need them both.

I’ll be leading a virtual event in a couple of weeks: Is There an Inspired Thought Leader Inside of You?” It’s not an easy road; it requires rigorous thinking and a commitment to excellence beyond anything you’ll see around you–but if you are here to change the world, there will be only one answer for you, as there was for me sixteen years ago: Yes, and it’s ready to come out!

So…Is There an Inspired Thought Leader Inside of You?

Your Life Story: Blockbuster or Straight-to-DVD?

 What if life is a story?

You know, a tale with a setting, characters, plot, maybe even a moral—and where you’re the protagonist? The hero/heroine.

Right now, if screenwriters were to knock on your door and want to put your life on the big screen…would it be a blockbuster? Or would it be a straight-to-DVD yawner filling the at-check-out bin at Walmart?

I have just finished reading a book by New York Times bestseller, Donald Miller, who was himself approached by screenwriters after the success of his novel, Blue Like Jazz. They wanted to make a story of his life, but there was a problem. (Every good story needs one, after all.) After a long interview with Don, one of the screenwriters suggested making “alterations” to his life story to improve the screenplay. As he spoke, Don’s life was becoming fictionalized and so Don spoke up, questioning this course of action.

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