Basically, there are two things that must be in place before any of your offerings can be successful (read: profitable). One is that it must be designed for a niche. So, there must be a group of people who you are targeted to offer your product/program/service toward.

The other is that is must solve a problem that your niche wants solved. Sounds obvious, yes? But many times, we create what we think our niche NEEDS instead of what it WANTS. It’s critical to know the difference and to use that knowledge to create your offerings.

There are many ways you can find out what it is that your niche wants most so you can create it and offer it to them. One of those ways is to hold a teleseminar that both delivers value to your participants as well as provides you with market research to use to inform your product line.

The best thing is that these types of teleseminars can be easy to fill and fun to host. Here are the steps:

1. Decide on the topic

Your best best is to choose a topic that’s broad in scope, meaning that it discusses a problem that the majority of your niche struggles with and would like help in solving. This will get you more people on the call as well as give you a more diverse group from which to learn from for your own market research purposes.

2. Use a mini-application

When people register for your teleseminar, ask them to fill out a short questionaire. This really begins your market research because you’ll be asking them what it is that they are struggling with specifically in relation to the bigger topic.

For example, if your topic is “How to Balance My Business and My Family and Still Have Time for a Great Life”, one question you may ask in your questionaire is, “What’s the ONE thing you struggle with most when it comes to balancing your business and your family? Please be as specific as possible so I can give you some specific strategies to help!”

You could also ask the question in another way: “What two questions do you have that I must answer on this teleseminar for you to feel it was of value to you?” You may also want to ask where your participant is at present with regard to your topic and where they’d like to be.

Tell them you’ll be answering as many questions as you can on the teleseminar itself, to engage people right from the start when they are registering for the call, as well as encourage them to show up in the first place (this is particularly helpful if this is a fre*e call).

Also, don’t be shy about telling your participants that you’ll be using their comments and feedback as part of growing your own business. For example, if you’re writing a book and you need some more content for a certain section, hold a teleseminar on that topic and share with your teleseminar participants that they may be featured in the book if their comments, suggestions or examples are used. People will jump to sign up for your call!

3. Ask questions

At this point, you have an outline for the call itself, and now you’ve filled it in with more content with the answers to the questions that were submitted when people registered.

The next step is to weave those questions and answers into the conversation on the call itself, and ask if there are MORE questions or comments around them. This will give you more in-depth and insightful information for your purposes, as well as be valuable to those on the call. This is when you really want to give the space and the time for your participants to talk (count 5 Mississippi’s if you have to to stop yourself from filling any silence while people are thinking).

Be sure to record the call so you can listen carefully to the conversation again and take notes about what you hear that your participants are looking for in terms of solutions to their problems.

4. Send a follow-up email

As soon as possible after the call, send a follow-up email thanking your attendees for their time and participation. Include notes from the call that you’ve cleaned up and converted to a neat PDF file for them as well for added value.

What you’ve done with this is type of ‘Open House’ teleseminar is invited your attendees to ask you anything they want about your area of expertise. With the information you glean, you can easily tailor your next product around the things they most want, which equals a successful offering for you!

Do you want to Master the Art of Teleseminars to Make Thousands of Dollars?

In my brand-new L.E.A.P.™ GOLD program, we’re going to go well beyond these basics with this topic, including delving into cutting-edge methods and new technologies to ensure your teleseminars are the ones your target market clamors for!

Although there are fancier ways to teach ‘virtually’, teleseminars are still HOT, simple to do, have stood the test of time and, with the methods you’ll learn from me, are proven to make more sales. You can be creative with them, making them more fun for you to host as well as for your attendees, and you can make A LOT of money from just a single hour of work that you can do in your pajamas from your office, back deck, front porch, dock or sailboat (I speak from experience here)…

We’ll cover both free and paid teleseminars, which to offer and why, what technology to use, pricing, what to do if something goes wrong (it happens to all of us at one time or another), and much, much more. I’m even going to share all my templates and other how-to pieces to model to host your own successful teleseminars.

Interested? Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY

I’d love to know your thoughts on hosting your own teleseminars – please feel free to share your comments below.

Tweet

An annual trip we make each summer is a visit to the spectacular Castle in the Clouds. The Castle’s original name was “Lucknow”, which struck me when the staff posed us for a photo of us in the tea room, complete with period hats. It seems wherever we go with our daughter Chloe, she attracts these opportunities – she’s pulled out of line to get special attention, she’s picked to go on stage, or the line we’re in puts us in the front seat. It happens so often, we couldn’t help but notice it – sure, she’s super cute and friendly (she’ll strike up a conversation with anyone) – but there seems to be something about Chloe that brings her luck now. Now, if we could just bottle that…

Seriously, I’m a believer in creating your own luck (thus why I don’t buy lottery tickets). Actually I don’t usually use the word luck because I think it’s too easy for people to use it as an excuse, and not in a positive way. I’ll share something personal here – I bristle whenever someone says to me how ‘lucky’ I am to have such well-behaved kids. Don’t get me wrong – I know how blessed I am (and those of you who know me or have been reading my ezine for awhile know this too) to have two happy, healthy, whole kids. No one is more grateful for that than I am. And yet, that comment (and similar ones) always comes across to me as if James and I had nothing to do with it, that it’s the luck of the draw that we have well-behaved (most of the time) children. Are you kidding me?

It’s the same thing in your business. I’m not ‘lucky’ to have a multiple 6-figure business. I created it, I earned it. And I did that by doing 4 things consistently:

1. Learning

I’m always learning something new or re-learning something I already knew. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. If you’re not growing, your business won’t grow. The more you grow inside, the more successful your business will be. So whether I’m learning a new marketing tactic or studying ‘divine success’, I know that learning will ultimately show up in the success of my business and my life.

2. Implementing

Of course if you don’t implement what you learn, what’s the point? I implement more often than most, which shows up in my success. I’ve also learned to delegate much more to my team which means we collectively get a lot more done. My coach’s request to you is to pick one thing you’ve been meaning to implement, either choose to do it yourself or decide who to delegate it to, pick a completion date and get it done!

3. Leveraging

You can’t create a truly lucrative business without leveraging as much of your time and your talent as possible. One way I do this is via my ’3+’ rule. Whenever I’m trying to decide whether or not to implement something, I ask myself if I’ll be able to use whatever it is I’m considering in three or more ways.

A simple example of this is writing articles about my area of expertise. When I first started out, we would publish the articles in my ezine, make them a blog post, and submit them to article directories. Now, we do those three things as well as post a podcast, submit that to podcast directories including my Artist’s Page at iTunes, submit it to blog directories, and more.

4. Mentoring (with and to)

I’ve had at least one mentor since I was 13 years old. One of the many lessons I learned from him was that I didn’t have to go it alone, that I could ask for help and be given it without strings attached. As I grew up, I’ve had different personal and professional mentors, which is why it’s always an easy decision for me to make that investment, in both time and money, especially when it comes to my business.

And being a mentor to other women entrepreneurs is absolutely part of my path. It brings me great joy and allows me to give them the lift they need to go from where they are to where they want to be.

Which of these four resonates the most with you right now? Pick one and create your own luck by putting it into action right away.

I’d love to know your thoughts on being lucky and these four ideas – please feel free to share them below…

Tweet

Creating supportive environments is imperative to your success as an entrepreneur. It goes without saying that if you have environments that will support you and your passion, it’s going to be much easier and more enjoyable for you to do your work. In Part 2 of this series, I’m going to touch upon a few more of the environments that I believe are most essential to your success and well being.

Let me ask you something. Are you like me and by about mid-February, you’ve had it with the gray day after day? Not feeling sunlight for days at a time really affects my mood and my motivation levels. And sometimes, when you work at home, it’s easy not to go outside for days at a time. I try to make any effort to spend at least 15 minutes outside, soaking up some sun. What about natural light in your work space? Windows? Clean and fresh air? Are these things part of your everyday creative environment, as they should be?

Exercise 5:

If you aren’t getting enough natural light, fresh air, and can’t see the outside world, you are stunting your creative flow. If there is anything you can do to change or improve your natural environment in this way, I encourage you to do it now.

Your energy field is one of your most important environments. It doesn’t only include your own energy and the sources from which you get it, but it also includes the energy, positive or negative, that you get from your spouse, your friends, your children, your other family members, and your clients or customers.

Since our relationships are so important to us, it is very difficult sometimes to set appropriate boundaries, and we tend to tolerate behaviors and actions that are detrimental to our own well being. In order for you to be as successful as you want to be (remember that everyone’s definition of success is different), you need to take a hard look at the relationships that are not nurturing you, that are sending negative vibes into your energy field, and recognize that you are allowing it. And then you need to make adjustments.

You will either need to set clear and solid boundaries, or you will need to let go, as hard as that may be. I found I had to do this with a few very old friends several years ago. As much as we share a history that I treasure, when I was making some major transitions in my life, the only “support” they could give me was to remind me how miserable it all was, even when I had moved through the misery of it and had created a new and happy life for myself. They just wanted to stay stuck in the misery of it, and you know why…because they were miserable! It was hard, especially because we had a lot of mutual friends, but I have never regretted that decision. And you know what happened? Several new amazingly wonderful supportive friendships showed up in my life soon afterwards.

Cutting ties with old friends is hard, but dealing with not-so-supportive family members is even more difficult. My favorite tactic is to not react to anything they say or do, to just simply respond. It is very hard to not be attached to the feelings that a family member can arise in you (guilt, worthlessness, stupidity), but at some point you have to take back your power and not allow them to make you feel that way anymore. Their issues are their issues and you need to let them own that – don’t carry it for them.

I have found that when I am able to respond instead of react, they tend to give up and move on much faster. And each time I do this, I get better at it, and they get the message more and more clear. And suddenly I have found them on my side, being a cheerleader for my work and my life. Believe me that it is worth it to stand up for yourself with grace.

As for dealing with clients or customers who drain your energy, your best bet is to create an Ideal Client Profile and stick judiciously to it. The ICP is not a new concept, by any means, but it is one of the best ways to create an environment around your work that is full of supportive and wonderful people who love what you do and who make you want to do more for them because of it.

Exercise 6:

Choose one person, if needed, in both your personal and professional life to whom you either need to let go of, or set some clear boundaries with, and get to work.

You’ll find that your inner environment will improve as you make positive changes to your outer environment. In addition, making space in your mind for your creativity to flow is important for you to be able to bring your best self into the world.

One of the ways to do this is to invest a bit of time each day into writing what Julia Cameron calls “Morning Pages,” which is three pages of free writing at the beginning of each day to clear your mind of some of the unnecessary clutter. Sometimes what you write will seem trivial, but it’s that trivial stuff that takes up much needed space in your head! Other times you’ll enjoy some real breakthroughs. I highly recommend engaging in this practice. I have been journaling all my life, but the practice of Morning Pages really does help the creativity flow – besides that I believe that every life that is worth living is worth recording.

Exercise 7:

Your assignment then is to purchase a journal or notebook, or create a new file on your computer, and start tomorrow writing three pages of whatever comes to mind. Make this a daily practice and watch what happens.

Making an effort over time to create supportive environments for the things that are most important to you will open doors and opportunities that you might never have received otherwise. You deserve to be supported in your work and your life, so choosing to allow those people and things into it that bring out your best is not only a gift to yourself, but also a gift to the world.

I’d love to know your thoughts on creating environments that support you – please leave your comments below.

Tweet

I’m writing this on my laptop in a Cosi café in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The reason I am here has nothing to do with me or my business, but the reason I can continue to be successful in my work is because I have set myself up to do so. How? By creating supportive environments. In this case, the laptop, the appropriate software, and the ability to connect to the Internet, as well as the support of my husband, all contribute positively to my accomplishment of the task: writing and submitting this piece on deadline and without stress.

Creating supportive environments is imperative to your success as an entrepreneur. It goes without saying that if you have environments that will support you and your passion, it’s going to be much easier and more enjoyable for you to do your work. I’m going to touch upon the environments that I believe are most essential to your success and well being.

There are many environments in your life, and most of them intertwine. Being aware of these environments will ensure that you have a hand in creating them, and not allow them to be created for you by tolerating those people, situations and things that you shouldn’t.

Important areas of your overall environment include your home, office/work space, body, energy, and nature, which all impact your mental, spiritual, and emotional environments.

In your outer environment, your home is one of the most important. Your home should be a sacred place for you, a place where you feel safe, taken care of, and content. Clutter and chaos in the home should be kept at a minimum, but your bedroom and your work space in particular should reflect calm. I know sometimes it just isn’t possible to stay on top of it all, but if you make a consistent effort to divide and conquer – and ask for help! – over time you can make a huge difference in the quality of your home environment. As bonus, you’ll create space for other more appropriate and wonderful things to enter as well!

Exercise 1:

If you have a list of things that are broken, need replacing, or just need to be tossed, then start doing this today. Pick three things that are in your home right at this moment that you can either toss or give away. Then do so, and feel the space clear.

Nothing blocks creativity more than clutter in your office or work space. To be honest, I write that sheepishly thinking of the paper piles on the floor surrounding my desk at home. What I need are several filing cabinets so I’ve ordered the ones I want and just that simple decision is freeing a lot of mental stores.

Exercise 2:

If you have clutter in your work space, you are not allowing yourself to be more productive and creative. Give yourself the gift of a clutter-free space in which to bring your gifts into the world. Take ten minutes at the end of each day and tidy your space. File what needs to be filed, throw away anything that you no longer need and can honestly assess that you really won’t ever need, and make a plan for tomorrow.

Don’t ask yourself to be perfect in this; sometimes you are going to need to fly away from your work space and simply don’t have the time to do so. When that’s the case, then take the ten minutes in the morning to clear your space so you can clear your mind for the work of the day.

Having the right tools to work with will also make your work more enjoyable and much less stressful. My desktop died a slow tortuous death one summer and you can’t imagine my stress level at the time. It got so bad that I literally shut down and spent a week in a cabin in the woods, just working from my laptop, just to get away from it. And I also can’t tell you how happy I was when it finally bit the dust and I bought my new one. The lesson for me, though, was that I should have simply bought the new desktop when I knew that there was no saving my old one, instead of going through the stress of not being able to do my work, and not being as productive as I like and need to be to continue to be successful in my work. It certainly wasn’t worth it – on any level – to suffer through those last weeks.

Exercise 3:

As in your home, are there things in your office or work space that need to be tossed, replaced or upgraded? Are you tolerating things for financial or other reasons that are really counter-productive, like I did with my ailing desktop? Choose one thing that would make your work easier and more enjoyable if you replaced, upgraded or tossed it, and make the decision to do whatever it takes to make that happen as soon as reasonably possible. Stop tolerating what you shouldn’t and get on with bringing your work into the world.

Your body is an environment that you need to take care of as well. Are you getting regular exercise? Are you participating in something physical that you really enjoy, not something that you dread making yourself do simply because you know it’s good for you? Are you eating as nutritiously as possible, without feeling deprived of the foods you love? Do you get haircuts as often as you should and would like? Do you treat yourself to a manicure, pedicure, or some other spa treatment once in awhile? Do you get enough sleep? Do you rest when you need to? Do you run on adrenaline or do you use food and exercise as your means for energy? Our body is one of the environments that can be easy to ignore (until something is wrong), yet when we take good care of ourselves in this way, it is amazing how much more energy, patience, creativity and satisfaction we have.

Exercise 4:

Choose one area of your body environment that you know you can improve right away and make the commitment right now to do it. That could mean you will go to bed a half hour earlier each night, or that you will take a 30-minute walk outside today. You could not have a sugar-laden dessert tonight and instead opt for a lighter version of frozen yogurt with fresh fruit. What action could you take today that you know will make you feel proud of yourself for doing so?

I’d love to know your thoughts on hiring help in your business – please leave your comments below.

Tweet

Building a responsive, high-quality list of email subscribers is the key to leveraging your marketing time and increasing your income. Here’s 6 specific ways to show you how:

1. Don’t Hide Your Opt-In Form

Don’t make your website visitors search for the opt-in form to your list. To make it super-simple for your visitors to sign up, do what I recommend to my clients – just a simple one-page website, that I call an Invite Site, where the only thing you’re doing on the site is inviting your visitors to sign up for your list.

Then there’s no confusion or question about what it is they should do. Once they sign up, you can redirect them to another page where they can gain access to more information from you.

2. Offer a Free Taste

Encourage people to sign up for your list by offering them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. Good choices are a mini-ecourse, a special report, a checklist, or a short audio program. Add some enticing copy describing the benefits your visitor will receive from your gift to increase your sign-ups.

3. Keep it Simple

If you only ask for your visitor’s first name and email address, you’ll get a higher response rate, meaning more people will sign up for you list.

Obviously, if you’re offering a physical Free Taste (like a CD), you’ll need to get your visitor’s shipping address as well. Just try to limit the information you’re asking for to increase the number of people who sign up.

4. Add Your Privacy Policy

Make your visitor feels comfortable giving you their email address by adding a short privacy policy right there with your opt-in form. Something as simple as “We will never share your email address, period” should suffice.

5. Include Testimonials

Even adding two or three testimonials of people who’ve signed up for your list and received your Free Taste will increase your list numbers. If you currently don’t have anyone on your list, send a copy of your Free Taste to a handful of colleagues and ask for testimonials in return (and offer to do the same for them).

6. Getting People to the Opt-in Page for Your List

Once you optimize your opt-in page, you need to get people to it. There are literally hundreds of ways that you can drive traffic to your web page where people sign up for your list (we cover 42 of them in my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System™), but here are three of the best:

1. Utilize your email signature in every email you send out. Be sure you point people to your opt-in page in your signature with some enticing copy as to why they should click on your link.

2. Write and submit articles, including the link to your opt-in page in the author’s resource box.

3. Do a simple pay-per-click campaign to drive targeted traffic to your opt-in page.

Follow these tips and you’ll start increasing your email list subscribers today.

I’d love to know which of these resonates with you the most – please leave your comments below.

Tweet

A question I get asked by entrepreneurs all the time is…

“Where do I start? With an ezine, a website, a blog, or what?”

The answer is – it depends. It depends on where you are at in your business building efforts. But after hearing this question asked often enough, I think there’s something else going on ~ a request for a simple way to understand how all the pieces fit together. So, here goes:

First, you want to have a clearly defined target market, and be offering solutions to the problems that market wants solved. Then follow the steps below to leverage your time in reaching them with your offers.

1. Create an Invite Site

The first step is to create what I call an Invite Site. An Invite Site is a simple one page website where the only thing you do is invite your visitor to sign up for your email list by offering them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. For the record, the ONLY website I had for the first three years in my business was an Invite Site and I’ve built a 6-figure just from that.

2. Write and send an ezine

As you build your list, you’ll want to stay in touch with your subscribers. The easiest way to do this is through an ezine, or online newsletter. If you’re just starting out, know it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A short article in text format sent to your list on a consistent basis is enough to get you in the habit of writing and sending an ezine, and for staying on your reader’s radar screen.

3. Post your ezine article to your blog

Create a simple blog for free at WordPress.com, give it a name that incorporates what it is that you offer (for example, advice about marketing, dog grooming, real estate, etc.), and cut and paste your ezine article as a post to your blog. The search engines love blogs because of their text-based format. They also love fresh content and with a blog you can post new articles consistently, keeping the content fresh, whereas on a static website, the information doesn’t change very often.

BONUS: Record a podcast from your ezine article.

Give your audience another way to get to know you (and take advantage of the millions of people who are downloading and listening to information on their MP3 players) by offering a podcast. Simply take the content from the article you wrote for your ezine and use that as your script for your podcast.

I know this seems simple, but that’s because it really can be this easy. If you put just the first three steps into action, your business will start to grow. As it does, you can start adding more bells and whistles, like graphics or different sections to your ezine, or jazz up your blog. In the meantime, keep pointing people to your Invite Site to grow your list, stay in touch with them via your ezine, and post your articles online so more people will find you.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this – please leave your comments below.

Tweet