What Are You Worth?

September 30th, 2009

What do you think your time is worth per day, per week, per month?  I call this your financial set point.

If your concept of work is like most traditional viewpoints, you’ve learned how to earn by going out, working long hours, maybe struggling and sacrificing a bit. But, in the end, if you do everything right, you’ll have some money left over. And then you can use that money to create wealth.

Earning money is one thing. But creating wealth, that’s something different. It requires changing your financial set point.

Determine where in your business you can make significant steps to break free of this trap. If you’re offering individualized consultation to clients, is there some way that you can package that expertise and offer it to a wider range of customers?

I did this when I started promoting my own seminars and training courses. Instead of just selling my time to a client and delivering training for that client, I scheduled an event and sold individual places at the event.

Of course these things still require an investment of your time. You have to plan, promote, show up and deliver whatever it is that you promised. But, it will still be a big turning point, for you because packaging your expertise in this way will expand your perception of what is possible.

Let’s say, for example that you are selling your time and your services for £500 a day. Whether you realize it or not, you have a mental limit on your price.

But if you were able to offer your same services as a group program or seminar, your gross profit would be significantly higher than that £500.  Even after factoring in marketing costs and covering all the expenses of the event, because you are servicing multiple clients with basically the same time investment for that day, your financial set point just skyrocketed.

This can make such an important change for you. When you start to realize that you can sell a day of your own and earn even more. Imagine if you do this 10 days a month instead of just one!

It all starts with stretching your beliefs about what is possible, and challenging yourself to try different methods.

Mentally raising your financial set point is the first crucial step you must take in order to create the wealth you are striving to achieve.

What Are You Worth?

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Posted in Business & Money, Business Success, How To Make Money, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »

Five Traits of the Truly Successful

September 29th, 2009

What is it that makes one person wildly successful in business and an equally talented person fail? Five important traits set the truly successful person apart. If success has been eluding you, take the time to study these traits and begin to cultivate them in yourself.

1. Be Optimistic – It’s easy to chime in with the doom and gloom going on around you. If you hope to exceed your goals, though, you must keep the energy pumping. Remaining optimistic in negative circumstances is a key characteristic in people who reach the top.

2. See Obstacles as Opportunities – Obstacles appear in everyone’s road to success. The trick is in being able to reframe those obstacles into something that will completely transform your business. Donald Trump, for example, has an amazing ability to perceive opportunity where everyone else sees a roadblock. The paths he has pursued seemed at first to be foolish to others. By refusing to be trapped by what could be seen as failure, he has reached a height of success that most can only dream of.

3. Be Open to New Information – In order to perceive those opportunities, you must first be willing to challenge old beliefs. This ability comes by constantly studying and learning what you need in order to move forward. New information changes your perceptions and leads to better decisions. Being able to see the truth and act on it is a shortcut to success.

4. Practice Awareness Transfer – There’s an exciting way to learn quickly what you need to make decisions. It is “awareness transfer” and it means soaking up large blocks of new information from other people. If you’re open to new information and understand the benefit of someone else’s experience, the stage is set for awareness transfer to take place . Watch for opportunities as they arise; perhaps the person next to you on a plane has just the information you need to make your next decision. By being open and aware of the chance to learn what others offer, you’ll move more quickly toward your goals.

5. Serve with Integrity – The most successful people you know have probably learned to serve their customers with integrity. Recognize that there are people in the world waiting for what you have to offer. Once you find them, offer what you have with integrity. It will benefit not only your own life, but also the lives of your customers and the people around you.

Anyone can learn to practice these five traits found in truly successful people. Make it your goal to pursue them; they can transform every area of your life.

Five Traits of the Truly Successful

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Marketing, Personal Productivity, Small Business Ideas, Success Secrets | 3 Comments »

Are You Selling Your Time For Money?

September 28th, 2009

If you find yourself caught in the time-for-money trap, there is one thing that will not help you to break free. And that thing is time.

Suppose your calendar is filled with appointments for months in advance. While that might sound wonderful, you now need to find a way to satisfy all those clients.

The very thing you think is the solution – time – is the very thing that you no longer have. Time is a finite resource – you can’t get any more of it. The more successful you are, the less time you have – yet you still try to sell it for a fixed price. That’s the nature of the time-for-money trap.

So now you’ve got to put in place systems that allow you to duplicate or leverage yourself, so that while you’re busy serving clients, you are simultaneously making passive income elsewhere in your business.

But by the time you reach that point, you’re so busy trying to keep the wheels turning on your time-selling business that the idea of having just one more thing to do is unbearable.

So you think that what you need is more time. But it’s not. It’s a little bit like an alcoholic thinking that the way to solve their alcoholic problem is by having another drink.

This is not a situation you want to get into, because it means you are fully caught in the time-for-money trap. And the very thing you think you need in order to escape the time trap, time, is the very thing that you no longer have. That’s how the time-for-money trap works. That’s the catch-22.

This happens because we tend to link the money we earn to our time and effort. And the change needs to starts with recognizing that we do this to ourselves. Change starts when we say, “Actually, the ultimate responsibility for this lies with me.”

And the good news is that the power to do something about it lies within you too.

There is one very clear direction I can give you on your way to mapping out a workable, customized plan that will get you from that time-for-money situation to an information empire, where the revenue is coming in but you don’t have to physically serve clients day after day.

You must acknowledge that more time will not help you break this connection. Your decisions will. Your decisions to create passive income for your business may involve hiring and training people, finding freelancers or virtual assistants, or creating products that can be sold online and bring in income all on their own.

Whatever your decisions are, the first one must be to embrace the mindset that time is a finite resource that you cannot control. But your creativity and capabilities? These are infinite. These are all things that you can control. These are your keys to breaking the time-for-money trap.

Are You Selling Your Time For Money?

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, Words Of Inspiration | 2 Comments »

Turn Failure Into Opportunity

September 27th, 2009

There are times in every business when it looks as though we’ve failed. The loss of a major client, for example, can feel like a fatal blow to a small business. This type of negative event, however, can be an opportunity in disguise. By learning three simple principles for turning obstacles into opportunities, you’ll be able to overcome any roadblock.

Step 1: Override Preprogrammed Beliefs

What normally happens when you lose a big client or experience financial disaster? Do you hide in your office and lick your wounds? If you do, you’re missing the chance to see your “failure” in a completely new way.

When life delivers a body blow, our preprogrammed beliefs can take over and cause us to withdraw. That is, they will for most people, but if you’ve truly decided to become successful, you’re going to override those old fears and look opportunity square in the face.

Ask yourself: “Where is the opportunity”, “What did I learn from the experience?” and “How can I turn this around?” This supposed “failure” can stretch your belief in your abilities in ways a smooth path can’t. What you’ll learn, if you choose to, can transform your career.

Step 2: Accept New Information

Remember those preprogrammed beliefs? They’re a combination of your sensory input and previous experiences, and can keep you from moving forward. Suspending those old beliefs and being willing to accept new information is the key to launching lifetime success.

Imagine yourself stuck behind a boulder on a narrow path. Your senses have told you it can’t be moved, but your creative mind already sees a way around it. Which do you believe? Do you sit down on the path and complain about the roadblock or do you start climbing?

Be willing to believe something new, even when past experience tells you the situation is hopeless. The ability to accept new information will change your perspective and open the door to opportunity.

Step 3: Make Different Decisions

Now that you’ve listened to new input and suspended outdated beliefs, it’s time to make different decisions. Deciding to give up won’t gain you a thing. Deciding, instead to seek new solutions can attract the success you desire.

Put your arms around the frustration and helplessness you’re feeling and use that emotion to fuel creative solutions. Come at the problem from a completely new direction. Refuse to accept failure as final. It’s not over until YOU say it’s over.

Turn Failure Into Opportunity

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Posted in Business Success, Marketing, Motivation, Personal Productivity, Words Of Inspiration | 2 Comments »

What’s Your Story?

September 26th, 2009

One of the surest ways to connect with your customers is to tell them a story.

Why? Because stories are so compelling. We can’t help but pay attention to a story. When we hear “Once upon a time…” it puts us into a listening frame of mind.

That’s the frame of mind you want your marketing campaign to evoke in potential customers. Marketing is both logical and emotional. And really great marketers know how to create that emotional connection with an audience.

They often do this quite unconsciously by the stories that they tell, or the way that draw on stories to make points or to give examples.

Think about your story. What is it? What story about you would really emotionally engage your audience?

You probably are doing this to some extent already. But it’s time to start doing it more consciously. Be aware of how powerful using your story can be to your business.

Now you may be wondering how to figure out what your story is. I can help with that. In his book “The Seven Basic Plots,” Christopher Booker talks about the theory that there are only seven stories in the world. Many are basically the same story, with the same themes appearing over and over again, just told with different characters.

But don’t just try to pick a story and fit yourself into it. Start to pay attention to what’s already going on in your business. Uncover the different elements of that story and pull it together more consciously in a way that you can really use it in your marketing.

You probably won’t suddenly say, “Hey, I’ve discovered it. I know what my story is. This is it and I’m now going to go out and transform my marketing with it.”

If you do have that experience, that’s great. But I think this is more of a process, something that is probably going to unfold over weeks or months.

So start thinking about your story, and you’re business will  be on the way to happily ever after.

What’s Your Story?

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Posted in Business Networking, Business Success, Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »

Focus On Value And The Money Will Follow

September 25th, 2009

What is your focus when you think about building your business?

Do you think about how much money you could make if only you could get a particular product off the ground?

Do you think about how much easier your business could run if only you could create that particular product – a product that would sell over and over, a product that serve you?

There’s a common denominator to both of these mindsets. YOU. They are all about you. How much money you could make, how much better your business would run. And, yes, your ultimate goal in creating a successful business and making money.

But that should not be your first goal. Don’t start with money as the first goal. When you focus on value first and talk about the people you want to serve, the money will come from that.

And that’s a very important distinction. So, if you’ve been struggling to get your information empire off the ground, maybe you’ve been focusing on the money too much.

When I first began creating my e-books and products, my initial focus was on how I could write a book that would generate passive income and make me money. Notice that the focus was all about me.

But when my focus changed to, “What do readers need to know that will help them solve their problems with getting new clients?” it was much easier for me to answer that question, and to develop a product that would help them.

That’s what is really important. One of the most important insights I could ever give you is this: It’s all about delivering more value to more people more often so you get more money.

Maybe you’ve been focusing too much on how to create something that serves you. Try shifting your focus a little bit more towards the people around you. What are they struggling with? What do they need your help with?

Having this new focus will actually make it easier for you to answer these questions. And with your insight and expertise, you will be able to develop the product they need to offer them solutions.

The big thing to notice is that as long as you base your focus on you and meeting your needs, it is probably going to be a long hard struggle to build your information empire.

But the instant you have the inner motivation of serving others and focusing on what your clients and customers need and want, the door swings wide open.

I truly believe that when we’re on purpose, when we’re following the path that we’re really meant to be on and when we’re serving the people that we’re meant to be serving, things do happen.

Focus On Value And The Money Will Follow

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Posted in Business Success, Cash Flow, Customer Retention, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Strategies To Keep Good Customers | 1 Comment »

Consulting As A Way To Get Clients

September 24th, 2009

Do you often make your best sales presentation, only to be shown the door without a contract? The problem may lie, not with your presentation skills, but with your approach. Offering yourself as a consultant can be a great strategy for setting more appointments and finalizing more sales. Here are three basic steps to follow when setting appointments, pitching your product and closing the sale, all from a consultation standpoint.

Step One: Set a Consulting Appointment

To make time spent on the phone setting appointments more productive, skip the sales pitch and offer to review their current product use. You could say, for example, “I’m glad to hear you’re currently outsourcing your payroll. That’s a great way to save your company time and money. What I’d like to do is review your payroll services and help you identify any additional savings opportunities.”

Notice that I didn’t say, “I think we have something you need to buy.” Today’s business managers are swamped with sales calls, and their first response to your hard sell will be “No!” Offering your services as a consultant, instead, lets them know they’ll benefit whether or not they become your client. That’s a very effective way to gain access to business managers already buying from your competition.

Step Two: Be Ready to Serve

How can not making a sale be of benefit to either you or the prospect? Here’s an important concept to learn as you build your business: Once you acknowledge that not every person you meet will become a client, you’re free to serve them in ways that will make them remember you.

In other words, take the pressure off yourself to make every sale and start looking for ways to serve the people you consult with. Can you help them save money? Do you have industry-specific knowledge that will help their business become more productive?

If you’re able to think creatively about problems plaguing their business, you instantly gain credibility with frustrated owners and managers. By removing the need to “sell, sell, sell!” your mind is free to create solutions of real benefit to prospective clients.

Here’s the takeaway: Approach your consultation appointments with an attitude of service to decrease client skepticism and open doors to future business. Help prospects without demanding a sale to keep yourself front-of-mind when they’re seeking new vendors.

Step Three: Lead Them to the Best Solution

It’s possible your product or service really is the best solution for their business. By honoring your promise to act as a consultant rather than a sales rep, you position yourself to lead them to that solution. Here’s how…

- Ask questions designed to uncover their current solution and its cost.
- Find out how well the solution is working and what they would like to change.
- The information you gain automatically tells you if your product or service will be of benefit.

Here are the two possible scenarios for completing your consultation appointment:

1)    If you can truly be of service, let them know you have ideas for significant savings and set a follow-up appointment to present them.

2)    If you find their current solution is sufficient, leave them with helpful information about their industry, market or business processes.

Whether you make an immediate sale or not, you’ve cemented yourself in their minds as someone willing to help. When issues arise that their current vendor can’t resolve or they’re required to rebid services, your name will naturally come to mind.

When sales stagnate or your client list keeps fluctuating, try using the consultation approach to set the stage for new business. Skip the hard sell and learn to ask questions that allow you to create solutions. By positioning yourself as a consultant, you’ll soon be seen in a whole new light by those in need of your services.

Consulting As A Way To Get Clients

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Posted in Business & Money, Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Sales Motivation, Success Secrets | 1 Comment »

Overcome the Barrier With Your First Product

September 23rd, 2009

When people ask me, “How long did it take you to create your first product?” I respond, “3 days, but 4 years to work through the resistance to get to that point.”

So, if you’re struggling with the process of creating products, know that you are not alone. You should also know that the first product you create will be the hardest.

There’s a good chance that you already have lots of great informational materials that you could convert into products, right in your own filing cabinets and on your computer.

Things that you take for granted; things that you don’t even value. But there are a lot of people in the world who would value that information you have, and would gladly pay for it.

So think about it. Think about what you’ve got.

Don’t underestimate the value of what you already have – your knowledge and expertise – to your customers.

When you lift your attention away from what you want; away from your own personal goals, and focus on what you know that can help other people, you’ll quickly realize that you have something valuable to offer to other people; something they will really value.

This shift in focus alters your perspective and will help you to break through the psychological barriers that are holding you back. It also does something even more significant. It propels you into taking some sort of action.

Because now you know that you have something someone else will pay you for, you just need to get it into the form of a product or service.

Have a clear goal for the material. Know exactly what you want to help the reader or the listener accomplish with your product. If you know that you want to help people to achieve “X” and you make your information product solution oriented, it will make it so much easier to decide what you should leave out as well as what to put in.

Your first product should be an area of expertise that just comes so naturally to you that you don’t even think of it anymore. It’s like second nature for you.

But it should also be useful and sought after enough that others are willing and wanting to put their hands on it. It doesn’t have to be a large product. It doesn’t have to make you thousands of pounds.

Commit to doing whatever it takes to get your first product created. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough to deliver what you promise to your reader, listener, client.

My first product wasn’t perfect; nor was my marketing system. But it was good enough to get me started. And it led me to where I am today. Part of the value I provide is showing you what’s possible; helping you by sharing my own stories and experiences about how I created my own information empire.

If I could do it, you can do it too.

Overcome the Barrier With Your First Product

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Success Secrets | No Comments »

Is Perfectionism Slowing Your Progress?

September 22nd, 2009

Have you ever completed a product for your business only to go back to it the next day, and tweak, fine-tune, alter and revise it – just one last time?

Have you ever finished a project for a customer, but in the end, decided to refine or add to it?

If this is your business approach, some may call you a perfectionist. You may think that what you’re doing is offering top-notch, quality service to your clients. But what you’re really doing is creating unnecessary extra work for yourself.

So, you’ll end up trying to perfect things that are perfectly adequate for the task you are trying to accomplish. Or, you’ll keep working on a presentation that already fulfills the job you promised.

Start to really take notice of where you’re creating extra work for yourself. Work that isn’t actually necessary, but that has almost become a habit for you.

Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this?”

Take notice of exactly where you are doing this in your business. Are you wasting time on a minor aspect of a product that is perfectly acceptable to your clients as it is? Are you going back and dotting “i”s and crossing “t”s, where the focus should be on general concepts and preliminary planning?

It could be that there’s something internal operating here; something that’s telling you that you haven’t spent enough hours working for the price you’re getting paid. So, you go back and do more, to justify what you’re making.

This has happened to me in my own business, and I know that there is no simple answer on how to correct it. You just have to try your best to curtail it and rein yourself in.

Not long after I started running my own events, I had a sound engineer record one of my training courses. The idea was to create a standalone product to sell to people who couldn’t make it to the event or wanted to learn at home or listen to the recordings in their car.

It should have been as simple as recording the day, then packaging that into a product. But I ended up spending a lot of time getting the material transcribed, editing it, adding in extra material, and paying a sound editor to edit out what I perceived to be flaws in the audio.

Yes, some of what I was doing was valid effort to improve the product for the customer and a justified investment of time. But basically, the product was ready for release – it was perfectly adequate to deliver the value as promised to the listener, long before I stopped playing around with it. It really was “good enough” as it was.

I ended up delaying the release of the product, which still resulted in a reasonably good profit. But I really didn’t make the passive income that I should have because I invested additional days editing and perfecting something when it really wasn’t necessary.

So, here are a few things you can do right now:

- Set a firm limit on your preparation time so you can’t over-service a client and thus diminish your daily rate.

- Notice all of the places where you are over-servicing clients.

– Bite your tongue, so to speak, when you are tempted to offer all sorts of unpaid extras to your clients.

– Recognize the value of both the time and service that you offer to your clients.

Paying attention to these things will prevent your daily rate from going down. Your ongoing awareness and vigilance will gradually help you to realize that your imperfections are perfectly acceptable to your clients.

Is Perfectionism Slowing Your Progress?

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Motivation, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, Words Of Inspiration | 3 Comments »

Empower Your Clients

September 21st, 2009

There are so many emotions wrapped up in how we sell our products, aren’t there? We’re afraid we’re being pushy. We want people to like us, but we need to make a living. It’s so easy to become entrapped by those emotions and stall out on the way to success. I have some advice for you, if you’re having trouble selling your products to others. Stop selling and start empowering your clients!

Information is Empowering

How do you give someone the ability to change their lives? The most effective way is to give them new information they can incorporate into their decisions.

Consider how students are empowered to succeed at learning. Their teachers give them new information daily, building a structure for making decisions about the world around them. For example, they learn early on that letters create words and words create sentences.

That knowledge empowers them to read, and if they decide to use that knowledge, the door is wide open to future learning. Those first lessons about letters and words gave them the choice to learn whatever they’d like throughout their lives.

Your relationships with clients are very much like those in the classroom. You have information about products and services that can improve their lives. Communicating that information in meaningful ways adds to your clients’ knowledge base, empowering them to make new decisions. Regard your clients as people who need new information, rather than people to whom you make sales pitches, and your sales will see a turnaround.

Integrity is Always Empowering

It should go without saying, but let’s say it anyway, that offering new information to your clients should be done honestly. Tell the truth about the benefits your products offer. There will be prospects who decide your products aren’t for them. That’s fine; you’ve empowered them to make their own decisions based on the information you’ve provided.

Selling with integrity always makes you a winner, whether they buy from you or not. Having a reputation as someone who answers questions and represents her products honestly is priceless. Plenty of people make quick cash misrepresenting the facts about their products; you’re in this for the long haul and you want clients to know they can make good decisions based on what you say.

Empowering, Rather than Selling, Builds Relationships

Since we are in business for the long haul, we need strong relationships with the people we serve. Offer them good information to build relationships based on trust.

That trusts equates to on-going business because they know they won’t be manipulated into buying what they don’t need. Position yourself as the reliable “go-to person” for information about your industry. Your clients will feel empowered to choose products that best serve their needs, and your own success will be cemented.

Let’s do a quick review of the ways empowerment, rather than selling techniques, benefit both you and your clients:

- Empowerment through information helps clients make confident decisions.
- Empowerment through integrity builds client trust.
- Empowerment vs. manipulation is the basis for on-going business.

Help your clients to make sound decisions based on reliable information. That kind of empowerment creates the best possible scenario for both you and the people you serve.

Empower Your Clients

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Posted in Business Success, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Motivation, Sales Motivation, Success Secrets, Words Of Inspiration | 2 Comments »

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