Re-Position Yourself

Professionals are among the most resistant entrepreneurs you’ll find. They take their technical expertise, go out to ‘go it alone’ or build a small professional firm, and clog up the works by diving into the depths of their work.

Your value as a technical expert is only one aspect of your value to your clients. Of greater value than billing hours to solve some matter for them, you need to become the ‘manager’ who makes solutions happen.

That means shifting to being a business builder who steps in to refine the work being done by other resources.

Really.

Keep that in mind and don’t let yourself be pulled off course and into the depths of ‘doing the work.’

Re-Purpose Your Know How

Your magical opportunity is to take your technical know how and experience and find new outlets for it. It’s not about gaining new know how – it’s about taking your know how and re-shaping how it’s offered in as many ways as possible to hungry audiences who are waiting for it.

Here’s an example. A recognized economist is a frequent expert witness. That’s a highly paid use of his know how.

But wait, it gets even better. He’s created a series of free white papers he’s posted on his web site. And hes’ turned them into articles distributed through the internet. Not a revenue producer you say?

Well, it is. Because he has paying newsletter subscribers. They get his analyses of the impacts of each related case and of actions by the government, describing the potential effects on the very types of cases he’s used for. Instead of use one case at a time, he now has paying subscribers across the country paying for his insights as they work up their own cases.

His subscribers may come to him for expert testimony, this year or sometime in the future. Either way, he’s got a steady stream of revenue using his expertise in ways other than one-on-one problem solving one customer at a time.

I have found there are basically 3 types of teachers in business and only one type is always worth following:

Type 1 – Trainers who have been handed  information, a script and exercises to coach you through so that you get some experience with a hypothetical example. They have seldom faced the actual challenges you want to solve. I recommend my UAGOS filter here: “Use a grain of salt!”

Type 2 – Teachers who has succeeded at facing the business challenges you have in front of you and is no longer doing it. Use caution with this type. Be sure you check out testimonials from others they have worked with to be sure their know how is relevant for the results you are trying to achieve.

Type 3 – Teachers who mentor. These are folks who have been in your shoes and can provide practical, actionable input. For the issues they see you need solving, they can bring you others with the expertise you need, to short cut your needing to go fish among strangers for your solutions.

This is the kind of teacher with whom I spend my time and money. Great examples are experienced consultant who have run companies, and technical experts who have done the business building strategies I want to implement in my own business.

My recommendation: Learn from mentors and coaches who have done it, and who have a roster of examples of teaching it to others who created success with it as well.

This is why I created the Business Accelerator club to train you how to build your business further, faster and easier. The focus is on stabilizing your business by managing it with ease and growing it by leveraging your experience to create low cost highly profitable new streams of income. I’ve done it. I’m teaching it, and I continue to do it everyday.

I am asked that question all the time and I love it. What I have discovered from building my own business, and consulting and coaching entrepreneurs and professionals over the years is this: There really are just 5 elements that determine business success!

How can I say that? Well, it all comes down to 5 points of focus: your market, your product or service, your marketing, your use of attention, and your ability to use others.

Let’s take a closer look at these five success factors:

Your Market – You’ve got know how and there is a market for it. Your first task is to check exactly what your prospective buyers want to pay for and adjust your know how to deliver exactly that. Once your relationships are in place you can propose other ‘add-on’ services and product. FIRST sell what the buyer wants to pay for.

Your Product or Service – The world is filled with people who share your ‘know how.’ The difference is in your ability to focus on the solution you are providing and it’s match to the need in the market place better and faster than they do.

Your Marketing – The messages you use needs to be in the language of the buyer. Beware being too clever and having them skip right past you.

Your Attention – The biggest stumbling block business owners put in front of themselves is responding to every interruption and distraction. Think you don’t? Try turning off your phone and email for 3 straight hours. Measure how much you get done!

Your Use of Others – I define leverage as getting the greatest return from time, attention, energy and resources. There are activities that only you can take care of for your business. Keep your attention on those and leverage the experience and intelligence of others to cover the rest.

Remember, the simpler you view each challenge, the easier the solution you’ll come up with. Keep your focus on these 5 keys and you’ll out pace your competition and have your customers singing your praises.

Technorati Tags: Productivity, Time Management

Barrier 1: Fear of The Unfamiliar
This is the ultimate barrier for any entrepreneur or professional – Yes, I know you’re expert at a lot of things. Even so, the world is full of opportunities that are missed because it’s just not something you’ve heard of before. This is one of the key reasons to work with a coach or mentor – to get access to ideas and information you don’t already know, and get a gentle push towards taking a fresh look at the possibilities they see on your behalf.

Barrier 2: Fear of Looking Foolish
This is a normal reaction to stepping into new territory. After all how will we explain it to people we know? We’re in the trial stage with a new idea, and others will keep asking you “How’s it going?” The importance of finding accountability partners is that they DO understand what you’re trying to build so you don’t have to explain it. You can keep your attention on design, execution and evaluating what’s working.

Barrier 3: Fear of Failing
This is one you likely already know. Rather than focusing on lack of success, focus on taking tons of notes of ‘things that need to be solve.’ That will ensure your attention is empowering you taking action.

Barrier 4: Fear of Success
This one can be sneaky – many of my clients don’t hear all the inner chatter telling them their relationships will have to change if they create breakthroughs and success. There is no single solution to this. Reserve the information you share with long time friends and family members. Make sure you have plenty of other people around to applaud to so you stay on track.

Barrier 5: Fear of Focus
This fear of what it will be like to have smooth sailing and their end in sight is one of the key reasons people procrastinate taking action. They find it disorienting to see the world with calm focus so they let emails and interruptions own their time. It’s important to turn off those distractions and lean the practical steps that achieve your vision.

Accomplish it and you’ll have all the choices you want for the next goals to achieve.

It usually come from the silos that most businesses use to get things done ‘efficiently.’ Everyone has specialized and only come together to solve problems. So the full ingredients that are in the recipe of successful businesses are known to only a few people with both broad and deep experience.

So the average small business is run by someone who left one organization in order to pursue an opportunity, and all their attention became absorbed in working to make it happen.

Along the way, they loose site of how it all got started and miss these two vital actions:

Ask

If you wait for your results at the register, you’re too late! You need to be out talking with your prospective buyers, checking if they are hungry for the solution you’re devoting all your time and energy to.

Get in front of your prospects and ask them first what they’re looking to have solved. Then you can suggest a couple of approaches to see if they really want it solved (and will pay for the solution) or are fantasizing about an ideal world they won’t actually invest in.

Be sure you ask enough people for their thoughts, to see what are true trends you ought to spend time pursuing before you launch into designing and delivering that solution.

Answer

I know, I know: the solution might be a new product or a service. It might be repackaging and repositioning what you already have.

Before you get too far down the line, pull together a prototype or sample or clear description of your product or service. Take them back to the folks you talked with before and ask for their impressions and preferences.

One of the most important questions you have to answer for yourself as you build your business is who is your target market. As a result of this feedback you might find your target market is actually a different buyer than you have been assuming.

Get the focus right and the offer tight and you’ll find your ideal customer clamoring for your products and services.

Or else what?

One of the challenges of entrepreneurial business is that there are lots of ways to do it wrong. If you do not plan and execute your business strategy correctly, here are examples of what could happen instead:

Focus – All too often, people are starting their own business in order that “no one is going to tell me what to do.” That’s not the foundation for business success.

SO – be sure you’re in business to solve a customer’s needs, in a way you enjoy using your mind and your energy. That’s the way to get a business that can grow.

Customers – The smartest business builders have learned it doesn’t matter what you’re interested in – what matters is what the buyer is interested in. And you won’t learn that unless you get into the mind of your prospect

SO – devote at least 10 hours every week to getting away from working ‘in’ your business. You need to talk to prospects, current customers and invite them to share their most pressing challenges, frustrations and dreams so you’ll know exactly what to offer them.

Productivity – If you’re doing it all yourself, you better be a sole practitioner accountant or attorney, or creating an internet business. That’s about the only way to create enough sales revenue from the 2,000-3,000 hours of energy you’ve got to put into a business each year.

SO – if you’ve got a product or service with growth plans bigger than that, get others onboard NOW to start handing off the repetitive work, so you can be driving sales and marketing activities, and designing your next product or service.

Profitability – Remember that “so no one will tell me what to do” attitude. I’ve seen business owners actually keep paying to keep their doors open, operating at a loss, for years. Profits come from providing what someone wants to buy for more than the cost of being in business

SO – use your time, intelligence and energy to deliver what people want to buy at a price that will add to your bank account.

Get these business building gems right and you’ll have all the freedom you want for the rest of your live.

Back in the olden days (just a little while ago) the image many people held of home based businesses was that they were for those who wanted to scrape by and make due.

The fact is that today not only are 6-figure businesses are being run from homes… there are even multi-million dollar companies.

What does it take to achieve that level of success?

1. A compelling concept
Many of these businesses are based on information products and services. Why? Because there is little to no need to manage inventories. Often the information that is being sold is being ‘drop shipped’ from an independent fulfillment house, or it is actually being delivered in electronic format.

2. A hungry audience
The most successful entrepreneurs and home based business owners stay tapped in to the trends in the marketplace. Today, everyone from financial advisors to bankruptcy attorneys, information product sellers and technology consultants are each able to provide stellar services out of their homes.

3. Subscription based clients
Among the new business models are those whose customers pay monthly for access and information. The subscription and continuity model is ideal because human nature will keep each of us paying monthly so that we know we have access to expert advice the moment we want it. It’s sort of like investing to broaden our own capabilities, even if we don’t use them regularly.

4. Easy delivery
How many envelopes do you receive in the mail these days? Compared to 5 years ago? If you’re anything like my clients that number is down 80 percent. Why? Because we’re all very comfortable getting our information and services electronically these days. Email, telephone, computer connections are all highly reliable paths for delivering information based products, services, and communication.

5. Re-purposable products and services
The highest earning home based businesses are those that take one piece of information and deliver it over and over again in many formats. This includes consulting to a client by phone, discussing the same material on group coaching calls, recording the calls and transcribing them, turning the information into home study course materials, and so on.

The most successful businesses today are those creating multiple streams of income for their owners and that holds true for home based businesses.

So what information do you have that you could turn into products and services, delivered electronically to a hungry market?

And one way to grow your business to the next level is to join the Business Accelerator TeleSeminar Club at http://www.TheBusinessAcceleratorClub.com – come on board and join for $200 savings the first month.

Come join me and like-minded business builders and learn all about how to run your current business ever easier, AND how to take your experience & expertise and turn it into – Programs, Products & Services Your Clients Are Hungry For – with all the how to’s set out for you.

Technorati Tags: home based business

1. Pick a single topic – Yes, I know you’re expert at a lot of things. Even so, for a 90-day period, select a single topic to use as the foundation for your marketing activities.

2. Make that topic the first thing you use when introducing yourself in networking settings.

3. Send a quick survey to your customers and prospects asking them what their “Single Biggest Question Is” about that topic.

4. Use that topic to write 12 articles. You can put those articles one per week on your blog and web site, submit them to article directories, and email them to your list of customers and prospects.

5. Offer to give a 20-minute talk on that topic to your best referral sources. This might mean a brown bag lunch talk at law firms, accounting firms, banks, professional association meetings and so on.

6. Tell your customers that you’re giving a talk on that topic on a teleconference and invite them to join in the call.

7. Have a colleague or friend interview you using the top 10 questions people shared while others listen to the interview.

8. Record the interview and make the recording available on your web site.

9. Send an email to your customers and prospects letting them know they can hear a recent interview you gave on the topic.

10. Create a tip sheet on the topic for people to download from your web site.

Bonus Tip – get permission from several of your clients and customers to use case studies of your working on the topic with them. These case stories are the foundation for testimonials that raise your credibility and authority in other people’s minds.

Each of these steps boosts your expert status, no matter what the focus of your business is. Once you’ve used all these steps on a single topic, you can now identify if there is another angle that will increase your expertise further and repeat all the steps.

“Change One Thing, And You Can Change It ALL!”

Your products, your services, your customers, your team, your personal productivity.

20 Percent More Productive In A Day

“Come on Linda, that’s not really possible, its it?”

Not only possible, not as hard as you might think. Here are some tips that can pull it off.

1. Let’s start with your mindset – most people believe they must keep doing what they’re already doing… That’s the worst mindset you could hold because it cuts you off from seeing the 101 possible ways of doing things with less effort, less attention, less energy. Shift to a mindset of “How can I reduce 20 percent of the effort put into this, today” and the ideas will start showing up immediately.

2. 20 percent up or 20 percent down – you decide. Do you want to get 20 percent more out of the system, or put 20 percent less effort into the results you’re now getting. Either choice will serve as a starting point.

3. Remember the 80-20 rule – it’s practically universal that 20 percent of your clients or customers are “high maintenance.” They’re creating 80 percent of your distractions, disruptions and diversions. Keep them but change your pricing structure to charge them 20 percent more.

4. 80-20 redux – If those high maintenance customers take their business elsewhere, they’ve given you back a lot of your time and resources to go after serving your ideal clients! Feeling pressured by a potential drop in revenue – then now is the time for…

5. Be a brainstorming wizard – the fastest path to change is being open to changing. That doesn’t mean that every task, activity, process or technique in your business must change. It only requires making it safe to raise new ideas that could boost productivity. One idea breeds another and another and in those discussions will be gems that never would have seen the light of day without stirring up the thinking on purpose.

Bonus Tip – use time blocking. Don’t believe reducing the interruptions can work? Well, I got an email from my client David O. in Los Angeles that reads “Linda, I didn’t’ believe you when you said time blocking would increase my productivity. I decided to try the 45-minute hour. I ‘knew’ that the project would take all that time… and when I looked at the clock after 20 minutes I realized that not only was I done with the project, I had also started working on the next one!”

Are you up for the challenge, the relief and the results?

And one way to grow your business to the next level is to join the Business Accelerator TeleSeminar Club at http://www.TheBusinessAcceleratorClub.com – come on board and join for $200 savings the first month.

Come join me and like-minded business builders and learn all about how to run your current business ever easier, AND how to take your experience & expertise and turn it into – Programs, Products & Services Your Clients Are Hungry For – with all the how to’s set out for you.

Technorati Tags: Productivity

Thank you all for your New Year’s wishes!

One of the things I love about putting this newsletter together each week is the gift it’s become in my own life.

It’s not something I thought of when I launched the newsletter as a way of sharing ideas and inspiration that would help YOU grow your business and accelerate your success.

My original intention was to help you set a clear focus, learn really easy way to get your obstacles and challenges out of your way, and use the leverage of specific High Payoff actions.

And along the way, sharing these tools with you has made them conscious and deliberate in my own life. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Los Angeles is always blissfully peaceful at the end of the year. So, as usual, I took the last week of December to clear my desk and ‘clear the decks’ from everything that piled up in the past year, and refocus myself for the coming year.

I’ve been working these past weeks on the launch of an exciting new program, and as I kept simplifying my thoughts about the content of the program, it coincided nicely with the topic of the first issue of the e-zine of 2009.

It all comes down to simplicity.

In these very tumultuous times, we need to find the simplicity of our personal VIsion, of the goals we set for our selves and our business, and the simplest ways to achieve those goals.

So – I’m making “Simple” the theme for this year. I’m simplifying the work I do with my clients and program members, the way I organize the information I share, and the topics I’ll be covering. I’ll tell you more about it next issue. AND I look forward to telling you all about my new program – The Business Accelerator Club.

I look forward to helping you create all the success you dream of for yourself!