Still funny, still true – enjoy!
Thanks to Andrea Lee for sharing this at her Wealthy Thought Leader event – it still cracks me up and it’s so true… enjoy!
When Doing Less IS More in Your Business
Are you working too hard in your business? If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are, especially if you’re in the early stages of your business building. And you’re not alone.
Here’s an example from my own client files:
I was recently working with a client who was a real go-getter, very serious about being in business for herself, and marketing only to a more affluent clientele. She wanted to increase her reach into that market online. And she was considering adding article marketing to her mix.
At this stage in her business, she was already doing quite well. She was close to making 6 figures and charging 5 times as much as her counterparts – and getting it easily. But she wasn’t satisfied. She really wanted to break the $100k mark before the third anniversary of her business, which was coming up in just a few months.
When she asked me, “What is the quickest, most cost-effective way to regularly market articles?” and then told me she planned to do this work herself, I stopped her.
“You know, just because you can do this task, doesn’t mean you should…”
She was quiet for a moment before asking me to elaborate.
“I know your writing is high quality and of high value to your market, and I definitely think you should be getting that content out there, to the appropriate places that will bring you the highest return-on-investment for your efforts. But I don’t think you should be doing this yourself. It’s not a good use of your time or your energy. What do you think?”
After a bit more discussion, she agreed to hire someone to do this for her.
As you read this, did you think of perhaps one task that you routinely do (or that falls by the wayside because you can never just get to it) that you know is ‘below your pay grade’ and yet you continue to waste time and energy on it (even if that time and energy is just thinking about how you’re NOT getting it done?)?
This concept was (still is, from time to time) difficult for me to grasp when my own coach shone a light on it for me. But since I’ve tried to be aware of how much effort I really need to put into a task to get the result I want, it’s opened up space for things to flow more effortlessly and more quickly than ever.
1. Email
Do you spend more time than necessary responding to emails? Do you write two paragraphs when a two-sentence response would suffice? Do you respond to emails that actually don’t require a response? Do you check email every 5 minutes (come on, fess up!)? What if you didn’t do any of these things and still had a handle on your inbox? You can – just follow Tina’s system to Escape from Email Hell (see Alicia Recommends).
2. Blog
Are you writing blog posts that are long? Maybe it even feels cumbersome to try to write a post the length of an article. Don’t – keep them short and pithy. Make sure your keywords are in the content and it doesn’t matter how long your posts are to the search engines – and your readers will probably appreciate shorter posts as well. Better yet, turn your weekly ezine articles into blog posts to save even more time and energy.
3. Website
Are you constantly updating your website? Does it really need to be revamped so often? More to the point, is this something you have to do yourself? No. Most virtual assistants can make website updates for you at a much lower cost to your time and energy than you doing it yourself.
4. Customer/Client Relations
Who responds to questions and comments from your clients and customers? Are you processing refunds, working out payment glitches, resending download links, answering the same questions about your programs over and over, or any other task that could easily be passed off to a capable assistant? You can quickly and easily train someone to respond to these inquiries in your voice by having them shadow you via blind-copying them on each email you send out. Then reverse the process and voila – another time and energy drain has been removed from your shoulders.
If you’ve been a client of mine, it’s very likely you’ve heard one of my mantras, “Done is better than perfect.” I usually follow that with, “And it’s never going to be all done.” So choose to cause yourself less stress and DO LESS. Experiment with this and see how much more productive you’ll actually be. Think of just one thing that you could do the easy way instead of the hard way, or delegate to an assistant, or better yet, take off your ‘must-do’ list altogether.
How to Use Teleseminars to Find Out Exactly What Your Niche Wants
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 targeting 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 4 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 questionnaire. 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 questionnaire 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!
Turning on Your Money Taps
One of the things I’ve been working on for several years is cleaning up my money issues. That includes everything from thinking I have to work really hard to make a lot of money, to taking care of old debt, to having a plan for paying down new debt, to plugging even the slightest money leak.
The truth for me is that I tend to not pay attention to my money as much as I should, so inevitably something happens where money MAKES me pay attention. It’s not usually a positive experience. 😉
I’ve made some big strides in this area, and along the way I discovered that once I started really paying attention to my money, it started showing up a lot more in a lot more positive ways.
Here are 4 tips that have helped me immensely to turn on the flow of money into my business and my life that I know can help you too.
TIP 1. Keep a daily tracking sheet of what comes in…
I learned this direct from my million-dollar mentor Kendall SummerHawk. I track every penny that comes in on one simple sheet each day. When I first started doing this, I had days where I didn’t have any money coming in, but within just one month, it’s rare if there’s even one day that doesn’t have some sum attached to it.
TIP 2. Have a purpose for each income stream
I’ve always done this without really thinking about it, but once I started getting crystal clear about the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ for each and every one of my income streams, they turned from trickles to rivers.
TIP 3. Take care of any outstanding money issues
Just yesterday I sat down with files and phone numbers in hand to cancel some memberships I wasn’t utilizing, get a refund on an erroneous charge to my bank account, and asked my assistant to send reminders for two overdue invoices. In that day’s mail, I received checks totally almost $3000. See, money likes being paid attention to.
TIP 4. Find and plug those money leaks
In every business, there are places where money is leaking out. It could be the webmaster who charges by the hour and takes too long to complete a task. It could be a monthly subscription that you either don’t utilize at all or that you aren’t clear on its return on investment to be sure it’s actually a good one to make. It could be paying monthly for a service you use all year in your business, and that you could save 10% on if you chose the annual payment plan instead.
When you start to pay attention to your money, it will immediately open up the flow of it into your business and your life.
Which one of these tips are you going to start doing today? I’d love to know, so leave your commitment in the comments below.
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
3 A-ha’s from the Wealthy Thought Leader
While I had many shifts, ideas, pauses for thought, and lightbulb moments while attending Andrea Lee's Wealthy Thought Leader event, I wanted to share with you three of the a-ha's I had during the event's three days.
1. I already am a wealthy thought leader…
I just need to embrace it. And I can't do that until…
2. I'm ready to take a stand…
And I am ready. It's been forming for a while now, most particularly over the last few months. I started getting really clear on my principles and guideposts for my business as well as how and what I want to teach and share with my clients to enhance their business as well.
And that re-ignited that…
3. I really do love what I do.
How blessed am I that I get to work with such amazing clients, that I'm surrounded with a fabulous group of colleagues that continues to deepen and grow, that I get to be as creative as I want all the time, because this is my business, my life, and my choice.
I'd love to know how this resonates with you. Please leave your thoughts below – and thanks!
The Simple Way to Practice What You Preach
As I'm wrapping up a slew of private retreats with clients this month, it's become clear that it's time for me to get focused on practicing what I've been preaching – or more specficially, to put myself through the same intense process and plan that I take my clients through.
This thought popped into my head several times during the retreats, but really came to the forefront of my thinking over the past week or so, as I've been making some very big decisions in my business that's going to majorly shift things going forward.
So, here's what I've noticed that's going on with me in my business that I'm hoping will shed some light for you as well:
Problem: Not taking action on a particular task.
If you're finding yourself low on energy around moving forward on a certain project or idea, it pays to take a look inside for the reason why.
As I learned from Andrea Lee, my private coach for nearly three years, everything is energy. And when I'm stuck – *especially* when I know what to do next – there's something wrong inside that's blocking forward movement. Because, after all, I am all about taking action.
Solution: Ask yourself…
1. What's one thing I coach my own clients on that I can apply to myself?
2. What's one way I show others how to operate their business that I can apply to my own?
3. What's one method I teach that I can implement more fully in my own business.
In other words, how can I practice what I preach more thoroughly?
The answers to these simple questions are the key to getting unstuck and moving forward.
Take it to the next level…
Exercise:
Complete the following sentence 30 times:
"The results my clients get from working with me are_______________.
And don't skimp – come up with 30 answers. If you have trouble getting more specific, ask your current and past clients to help you fill in the blank.
What are the benefits to doing this exercise?
Many, but for the purposes of this conversation, the value is in bringing forth the things that are the most beneficial for you to make sure you're focusing on in moving your business forward – both for yourself and for your clients.
So take your answers and turn them around to apply them to your own business!
I'd love to know how this resonates with you. Please leave your thoughts below – and thanks!
(c) 2010 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
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