Are People Hungry For What You Offer?
July 25, 2010
You LOVE what you do. You are GREAT at what you do. Then how come your business is slower than you’d like it to be? Are you 
not so great, or what’s the problem?
Here’s the deal….it’s your job to satisfy the hunger in others to have their problem solved. You have to use language that is emotional, not logical. People buy on emotion 100% of the time. They then justify what they have bought with logic.
This is why talking about the features of what you offer makes their eyes glaze over. They DON’T care that your jewelry is 100% sterling silver and comes with a year long guarantee. They DO care that your jewelry will make them feel sexy and pretty when they have been feeling tired and ugly. They care that your jewelry will get them an admiring glance from a husband who hasn’t notice them very much lately.
So, if you want to create sales, create hunger. Tell a story about what your jewelry has done for someone. Show pictures of smiling women wearing your stuff. Demonstrate how someone can place that necklace just SO and it will match their come-hither look. If you can show someone that your stuff creates what they crave then you will make money and even better, your customers will be happy because their problem is solved.
Here’s how to create sales conversations or sales copy that creates hunger:
- Talk about your customer, not you
- Offer clear contrast (before/after or with/without or fast/slow)
- Use tangible examples “more dates, more desire, unbreakable”
- Talk about the beginning and the end only (before/after) don’t talk about the PROCESS that happens in the middle (you choose jewelry, you wear jewelry….not what the order process is like in between)
- Use visual stimuli (pictures) which creates interest 40 times faster than hearing does.
Changing your conversations or sales copy to solve what your customers are hungry for will feed them and you. That kind of satisfaction is just as good as the satisfaction you feel after a good meal, and lasts longer!
How Letting Go Will Make You Money
July 13, 2010
Many of the solo professionals I work with are stuck, and that stuck place (often a limiting belief) is hurting their personal and/or business life. It’s my job to find the stuck place and help that person see the down-stream effects of staying stuck. Sometimes, one experience can impact and confine us in ways we don’t even realize until an “outsider” points it out.
Let’s consider Patty, who had an asthma attack when she was 10 years old after being near some cigar smoke. (This is not a made up story, by the way.) Patty never wanted that to happen again. The feeling of her throat closing up and her muscles straining for oxygen scared Patty, as it would most of us. Way back then, something in herself or in her environment pointed Patty into fear that never has been let go of. She could have been scared over the asthma attack but, with reassurance, let it go. Instead, Patty set out to control her environment and make sure that never happened to her ever again.
By the time Patty was 16, she had opted out of summer camps for fear of being around camp fire smoke. At 17, she decided not to take her senior trip because she knew some of her class would sneak a smoke on the back of the bus. In college, she didn’t join a sorority and she roomed alone, fearful that she would be around sorority sisters who would smoke.
By the time Patty was 30, she had limited herself from ever wearing perfumes, ever having fresh flowers or live plants of any kind in her home, or using candles. Her limiting belief that she would have another asthma attack had spread from fear of smoke to fear of any odor at all, good or bad. Her constant statement was that she was “highly allergic” and had to stay away from people, places, and things that might set off an asthma attack. By now, that attack was 20 years old, but the limiting belief that she could control it ever happening again paralyzed her.
Patty is smart. She earned a college degree and then got a Master’s degree. But she studied for her Master’s online and at home, for fear of being out in the world. She worked for a small firm for many years, limiting her income, because she knew that the other 3
people would cater to her fears, agreeing to forego fresh flowers, perfume, smoking.
I could go on with this story, for Patty is now almost 60 years old and I still see the many ways she has limited her income and her personal life with the limiting belief that smelling any odor at all will set off another attack. She has lived her life for 50 years in fear of something that happened only once, and in the belief that she can control it ever happening again.
Maybe you are shaking your head in disbelief. The thing is that we ALL do this. Perhaps we limit ourselves in more subtle, less dramatic ways. But then again, perhaps not. Here’s a quick exercise for you. Sit down right now and list out all the things you have passed on in your business, for fear they would not work out. Give yourself five full minutes to really think about the things you’ve said no to, and why. I’d bet if you shared this list with a friend or your biz coach you’d realize that your past experiences have limited your current success in ways that you never even realized! The question for you today is this…..how has refusing to let go of old experiences and beliefs cost you money?
In a few weeks, I’m interviewing neuroscientist Sandi Smith, who is an expert at seeing how our fears block our fortunes. You are welcome to join in on the call, to register (it’s free) click here.
Why Some Entrepreneurs Don’t Make Much Money
May 16, 2010
Here’s a quick test for you…let’s say I hand you a C-note. Close your eyes and feel that hundred dollar bill in your hand. Now, watch your thoughts and see where your mind goes. Just watch, until you get a thought that comes up about this money in your hands. What is the thought?
- A good number of people will have a thought something like “I better put this away, I don’t want to lose this money.”
- Fewer people will get a thought that goes “this is a gift, truly found money. How should I use this, what can I do?”
If your thought was about keeping the money safe, I’ll wager that you think of money as potential loss rather than potential gain. And that mindset isn’t going to help you create a business where money automatically comes in and goes out, just like the tide. You can’t stop the tide. If you constantly try, you still get the inevitable but you are much more miserable over it than if you just let that tide go out and enjoy watching it as it goes. Same with money!
The other day I had someone contact me who was interested, she said, in coaching for her small business. Actually, she had two businesses, had them both for several years. The very first statement out of her mouth was not about her businesses but about her money. “I make less than $100 a month with these businesses,” she said. She didn’t tell me about her businesses, ask me how I might help her, or what she hoped to gain in working with me. Instead, she came at me from a place of lack, focusing on what she doesn’t have. That lack is fear-based, contracted energy. Behind it is a poor-me mentality. That creates a constant story of lack, a negative energy. It literally “pulls” others toward that lack. While we didn’t get far in talking about working together, she right away let me know she had little money and probably could not afford to work with me. Underneath that statement was a subtle pull on me, to join her in her financial lack by cutting a deal to work with her for less money, or to sit there and spend an hour of my time for free while she talked about her financial lack rather than asking me how I could help her go where she wanted to go. Then, we both could lack and she would have a “community of lack” going. Do you see? Very subtle, but very powerful. Watch for that from others, and don’t let that energy go to work on you.
Let’s think about this solopreneur who has two businesses that are both several years old and who makes about $100 a month from both of them together. Does she need to be more profitable? Obviously, yes. She probably needs to focus down on one of the businesses, build that to an ongoing profit, and then bring the second business on-line. She may need to ditch one — I don’t know her well enough to say. I do know, though, that it doesn’t work to approach me about working with you and ask me first thing what I charge. The money isn’t the issue. The issue is what would this $100 a month entrepreneur GAIN in working with me (or someone else) rather than what she would LOSE. If I can’t get her to focus on the gain, she won’t engage in what I suggest to her. She’ll be thinking about that money she’s losing by paying me (or someone else) rather than what she is GETTING in the process.
There are a lot of reasons why many solopreneurs and small business owners are not profitable. Many lack knowledge about the basic tools of business. These things are skills that one can easily get through classes, reading, having a mentor or a coach, or going to workshops. The bigger barrier to making money is your own mind set about money. If you focus on how little you have it will absolutely never grow. If, instead, you focus on what you can gain with the money you have (no matter how little or large that amount) you will be OK.
Here’s what I wrote to this woman. “You know, it’s never about the money, it’s about what will happen if you do NOT change and learn to invest in building your business. When people e-mail me and ask only what it costs to hire me, I know they are trying to decide only on cost. The wiser decision is based on value or what it will cost them if they keep on the road they are on. See, it would benefit you to know more about what we might do for those three months, but instead of asking me that, or asking when we might talk about it, I see that you are asking only what it will cost you, not what you will gain. So there you have a little bit of coaching for free. If you change to put your attention on gain rather than loss, you will begin to shift your thinking and your business from cost to benefit, both for yourself and for those you wish to serve.”
If you are not profitable through lack of focus, bad planning, or lack of business skills you can fix it. It takes risk, self-honesty, willingness to feel a little uncomfortable as you learn new skills and behaviors. It takes faith! But the biggest thing it takes is shifting your mind set from lack to gain. Or, from a poverty mentality to an abundant mentality. Or, from fear to love. Not only will you benefit, but those you serve will benefit. This week, practice not leading with money questions. Practice focusing on what you gain rather than what you lose. It will shift your mind set, and in time it will shift your bank account, too!
Dreaming Up Your Best Life
April 28, 2010
How To Manifest What You Want In Your Business
April 4, 2010
I’m a big believer that you can envision something and make it happen…..it’s something I’ve done all my life, in fact. I’m certainly not the only “visioneer” though. Most elite athletes use visioning to “see” themselves going through their competition or their games successfully. Musicians envision themselves playing a particular piece of music in their mind – going over and over the musical score, seeing their hands making the correct moves on their instrument.
In fact, “seeing” myself playing a piano piece or “practicing in my mind” as I then called it is one of the first ways I learned that I could make things happen. An early-bird piano student (I started when I was 7), I somehow realized that I could read the music and then re-play it in my head, and “watch” as my hands played the piece. In today’s world (7 was a long time ago, ha!) we call it visioning. Visioning is a key precursor to manifesting what we want to do with our life. And it’s a very handy little tool to have. I’ve used it in all sorts of ways.
- Learning music for piano, flute, and guitar for recitals and concerts
- Teaching myself how to do proofs in geometry
- Remembering positioning, draping, and treatment routines for neuromuscular therapy treatments when I took my national boards
- Seeing myself walking again after back surgery as a child
- Finding the exact piece of furniture I wanted for a room in my home
- Speaking to large groups successfully
- Finding the perfect office space for my business
There’s more (ask my husband about my “finding” the perfect car on Ebay for a song), but you get the point. Visioning leads to manifesting, and manifesting is a critical skill to have as an entrepreneur. I’m not saying that one doesn’t have to put the time in to get what one wants, but you can work with the flow of things and get there a lot faster than working against the flow. And working in the flow means having a clear vision, a picture if you will, of what you want to create in and around you as you work.
Here, then, are three ways to make things happen. You can use them to accelerate your income, build your business faster, get clear about the products and services you want to offer, and even find the perfect office space!
- Step one is to find about 15 minutes of totally quiet, alone time for yourself. Get some paper and a pen, sit or lay down, and close your eyes. Ask yourself “how exactly do I see my business?” And then wait until words or pictures form in your mind. Follow them, make them fuller. If you see yourself in an office, look around and get a detailed look. How much of the time are you there? Are there other staff members? What are you wearing? Where is this office located? Do you see people there? Make whatever pictures come to you as full as you possibly can. If you’re traveling in the pictures that come to you, ask where, how much you travel, who you are with, what you do when you get there. No matter how outlandish the pictures or words are that come to you, let them become detailed and full, and follow where they lead. Jot down anything you think you won’t remember about the words or pictures. Keep at it until you have a full vision of the things you want to manifest in your business.
- Make a vision board. You can do this any way you like. I sometimes use large poster board, sometimes just a sheet of paper. Either way, go to Google images and search for pictures that represent what you want to make happen. Get the pictures out of your mind and into the world. Print them, stick them onto your vision board, and put it where you can see it often. Your eye will go to it many times during the day, and your brain and your energy will lock on to the visions you put there. Soon enough, you’ll begin to see your way to each one of those pictures. Your energy will be so full of what you want to manifest that you literally will begin to pull the thing toward you. I’ve had completely doubtful clients do vision boards in my workshops, only to call me up six months later and report that every single thing on their board was “magically” accomplished or found. No, it isn’t magic. It’s putting your energy and intention toward what you see in your mind’s eye, and have helped to make real by creating your vision board.
- Share the vision board you made with your family, friends, and team members. If you want to put even more thrust into your vision, take the time to share what you are going to make happen by showing your vision board around. You’re not asking for help, you’re just saying what you are going for to those you spend the most time around. You’re creating a wider, broader energy for what you want, even if you don’t think anyone will actually do something to help you. The fact is, you just never know. One person might mention something in passing to another person, who happens to be just the person you are looking for to help make something happen. Sharing your vision deepens your own commitment to it, too. It helps you lose the “oh, I don’t know if this will actually happen” self-doubt that seems to always be lurking underneath us. Just make your board, share it with a few people, and go about your business. You don’t even need lengthy explanations – let the pictures speak for themselves.
The thing about envisioning is that it will become a habit for you if you do it consistently. You’ll find yourself stopping for a few seconds to envision even little things in your life – the perfect dinner one night, exactly how you want to look and speak in front of a group. Learning how to open yourself to the inner knowing, the vision inside yourself, is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your business. Set aside visioning time once a week for the next six weeks, and notice how your life and your work begins to change.
(c) Sue Painter
Can You Really Describe Your Ultimate Target Market?
February 7, 2010
One of the real “rookie” mistakes made by new entrepreneurs is to completely fail to know her target market. This is something that is very easy to spot. A few of the signs are:
- Her business is not thriving, meaning she needs more customers and she is not financially successful.
- When asked who she works with, she replies “Oh, I work with just about anyone.”
- If asked to thoroughly and completely describe her target market, she is flustered and can’t give more than a sentence.
The “Oh, I work with just about anyone” response is one I’ve heard from both new and not-so-new entrepreneurs many times. So many times, in fact, that it now drives me a little nuts. When someone says that, they are setting no boundaries for who they work with, which is a deadly thing. Let me ask the “just about anyone” entrepreneurs these questions:
1. Does it matter to you if a customer stiffs you?
2. Are you open 24/7?
3. If you were, for instance, a seller of curtains and blinds, would you drive 400 miles to sell a set of blinds to someone?
Of course, the answer to each of these is almost always NO! And that’s a good, thing, because that entrepreneur has just started on a path of better describing her target market. Her target market are people who have the money to pay for her products or services, she works with those who contact her during specific days and hours of business, and she has a limited geographical area in which to sell her blinds. This isn’t a complete description of her target market, but it is a start.
You can picture the creation of your target market as setting fences and gates around a specific group of people with whom you really want to work. You might not be as blatantly obvious about it as the gatekeepers are at hot night clubs, where one must stand outside on the sidewalk and get personally picked to go inside, but that is one very good example of a business who is very picky about who they want to serve.
I’ve learned about finding your niche and describing your target market from 3 or 4 of my coaches and mentors, but the one who made me work the hardest to describe my market, hands down, was Suzanne Falter-Barnes. She has a very long list of questions that one must answer to get through one of her platform building classes. The first time I saw that fat list of questions I just about fainted. In fact, the document she proposed I fill out to describe my market was 17 pages long! Still, Suzanne knows her stuff and I was there to learn, so I plowed into the questions. At the end, I felt like I’d invented something akin to a kid’s secret playmate. I started getting actual pictures of how my target market person looked, how she dressed, what she spent her money on, and more. I got so familiar with her in that 17 pages of ruthless questioning that I decided I knew her well enough to name her, for Pete’s sake! And that is what I strongly suggest you do, too.
My suggestion is to sit down with your computer or a piece of paper and describe a “sample” person from your target market as if she (or he) is a character in a book you are writing, and it’s up to you to fill your reader’s head with a detailed, specific, colorful image of the character you are writing about. Describe age, education, the kind of work she does, where she lives, her likes and dislikes – anything you can think of that will add to the picture in your head. This may lead you to dig around on the web for demographic or other information.
Spend quality time here, for it pays off in the end. Ask yourself (with pen and paper or keyboard nearby) “who is the most perfect customer for me?” If you have a hard time doing that, prime the pump by listing the characteristics of your most favorite or best customer so far. From there, dream on. Who would be delightful to work with? Who would you dread working with? What characteristics drive you crazy? Who have you worked with who bugs you so much you hope she never calls you again? You get the picture – and that’s whole point. For here is a secret about financially successful entrepreneurs:
Those who describe and visualize their target market well have started the process of manifesting exactly that type of customer for themselves. You now have a vision of who you want to attract, in detail. Put that right on your business vision board and keep it in your mind’s eye, for who you focus on tends to come your way.
Having this vision and description on hand also makes it easier to walk away from business that isn’t right for you, doesn’t truly interest you, and has a downside to it. (The downside being that while you are spending time with uninteresting client A, you cannot very well be also working with or running into very interesting and exciting client B. This is called “opportunity cost.”) Realize that it actually COSTS YOU to work with the wrong customer, for you are giving up the opportunity to work with who is just right for you.
Taking the time to dream up your ideal target market person makes finding that type of person much easier. You now know where to focus your efforts. If you are spending a lot of time and money networking in a group of direct marketers, and these are not your target market, it’s time to make a change. Pull your time and money from the wrong group, and go find the right group. You’ll find more and better business in the new group and waste less of your precious time.
When you are creating marketing plans, writing sales copy, or pulling together a presentation you’ll be able to keep your secret target market person right with you, writing to them. There will be less agony over creating these things.
And finally, when you have the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, you will be much more at ease because, after all, you will pretty much feel as if you know that person in a way. You’ll be confident that you’ve spent time with someone who has a much higher chance of needing what you offer. This will shorten your sales cycle and make you more money faster. I don’t know of any entrepreneur who doesn’t want that!
So, get that blank paper or computer screen and get going. Breath some life into your target market, and you’ll breath new life into your business, as well. It’s a win-win for every entrepreneur.
(c) Sue Painter
Who Is In Your Entrepreneurial Community?
February 6, 2010
For the past few years now I’ve experimented with just about every method of coaching and mentoring that is available to solo professional and entrepreneurs. All of them have their pros and cons. But one thing that I’ve come to know for sure is that if you are in your own business, you need a great community of like-minded entrepreneurs around you. Why?
- Running your own business is a solitary endeavor. Decisions are up to you and you alone. You need the perspective of other business owners to round out your own thoughts. The perspective of your employees (if you have any) isn’t the same thing.
- Your own energy waxes and wanes. I’m not talking about the moon or hormones, either. The best business owners know that their own energy has to attract others to them – good staff, great customers, good deals for rents or whatever else. And it is very hard to keep your own energy up where it needs to be without sometimes drawing from the good energy of others.
- Time inevitably puts you in the box. What do I mean by this? When you created your business you did it to put forward a new, not previously done type of business. You felt what you had to offer was unique and special. In other words, you were out of the box. But as time rocks on, your own thinking gets boxed in by the very dailiness of what you do, by your own fatigue, and by the fact that others will emulate you. To keep on re-creating a business that continually pleases and serves your customers, you need to keep yourself out of the box.
- Your ideas, although they are great, can be sharpened and improved by your entrepreneurial community. Simply put, multiple heads are better than one. Here’s a quick example of this. In one of my own communities, a woman had a deal with a book publisher for her very first book. But she was balking about what the publisher wanted to title the book, taking issue with both the main title and the tagline. She brought it up in our next get together, only to find that her adamant opinion was not shared by a single one of us! We all though the title was good and that, furthermore, the publisher knew what would sell much more than the author did. As I pointed out, the author is the subject matter expert but her publisher is the marketing and sales expert for her book. All but one of the entire community basically told her to suck it up. And after she listened to us, she did! She ended up coming all the way back around to what the publisher had suggested, with only a very minor one-word change. Which leads me to my next point about the benefit of being in an entrepreneurial community….
- It helps you get your own ego out of the way, and think about what you offer from your customer’s point of view. Believe you me, you will ONLY be successful if you offer what your customers want and need, not what you in all your wisdom think they need.
I could probably come up with a few more good reasons, but I think you, smart as you are, get the point. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to foster a solo business. I cannot even begin to list for you all that I have learned from constantly participating in my own communities. I’ve gotten both wonderful, gentle, loving support and a sharp kick in the pants….and both have been beneficial to me. It will be the same for you.
I’m excited to tell you that I’m forming a new community for solo business owners that will offer these benefits ( and more) in just about a month. I’m calling it Private Matters because I’m creating a group to which you can bring your most private thoughts and worries. These deeply affect your business, they matter. So….in a nutshell….Private Matters. It will be small, full of sharp thinkers and dedicated solo business owners, and it will change you and your business in ways that you can only dream of. If you feel you are a good match for Private Matters, you can e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get the application and information.
Meanwhile, keep your business focused on who you serve, what those people need, and how you can best offer products and services that meet those needs. And remember to reach out for community regularly. Both you and your customers will benefit.
(c) Sue Painter
Does Your Business Suffer From Perfection Syndrome?
January 28, 2010
Perfectionism will kill your business. The goal that you have as a solo professional is to provide a service that solves the problem your customer has. If you do that, you’ll succeed. Notice that I don’t say you have to PERFECTLY solve your customer’s problem. In fact, if you push for a perfect solution you run the risk of putting your customer off, because you will begin to nit pick at tiny little things you are offering, and you’ll lose focus on the big picture.
This thing about perfectionism is controversial to talk about. We are taught to find the “perfect solution” to our customers’ problems. But here’s the thing, and it’s important to remember. Life changes for that customer almost daily. The customer herself can’t really articulate a “perfect” solution. She may think she can, but once her “perfect solution” is in place, things will change and she’ll find that she needs to tweak it a little bit over time.
The big truth is that there IS no ongoing, perfect solution for your own business or for your customer’s business, either. You plan a resolution to an issue and execute it, and after that you see what worked and what didn’t work. You change it around the edges a little bit and go again. Finding what works for yourself or for a customer is not a straight line. It’s a curving line, sometimes curling back on itself, sometimes meandering where you never dreamed it will go. To hold that as true and faithfully watch when changes are needed is the best practice for a solo professional. It’s the best practice for larger businesses, too, but they often become too inflexible and stodgy to execute in that way.
Here are two big problems I see with solo professionals who are trying to establish a business that makes enough money to be viable.
1. Fear of making mistakes, which manifests as failure to take timely action.
2. Trying to decide everything by logic rather than feeling into what might be best for their business or their customer’s business.
I’d much rather see a solo professional try something and fail, and then learn from what went wrong, than to be paralyzed from the fear of failure. Almost all successful business owners have made mistakes, and there’s no sin it in. The sin is in burying the mistake and failing to look at it closely so that one learns. I literally have to re-train a good portion of the clients I work with to actually tell me when something goes wrong! We get into this practice of trying to hide our mistakes, which doesn’t help us in the end.
Additionally, there is a great benefit to using your feeling sense to help make decisions for yourself and your customers. You might also think of this as using your intuitive sense of things rather than depending solely on logic. You can ask yourself a question, close your eyes, and get a gut feel or sense of the best answer. The more you practice this, the better you will get. It is a great addition (and sometimes a replacement) for deciding only by logic alone. In fact, most of the millionaire entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed over the past years tell me that when the chips are down and it’s decision-making time, they trust their gut. Not the figures, but the gut. That’s a great confirmation of using your feeling sense to help you made decisions. Sometimes things will not seem logical at all, but you have a strong sense it is the right path to take.
The truth is that there IS no perfection in this life, so trying to run our businesses from that place will never work. That is the wisdom that successful solo professionals have come to know. the next time you feel yourself fearful over making a business decision, take a breath, check your gut, and move forward. You’ll find that you will do better in the end than waiting for perfection to come.
Add Fun To Your Entrepreneurial Endeavors
January 24, 2010
Lately I’ve run across more than one budding entrepreneur who makes building a business out to be nothing but serious and a lot of 
hard work. I’ve been pondering this a lot. Our energy follows our thoughts. When we hold only serious energy toward anything, it BECOMES hard to us. We fulfill our own expectations. We start believing that there is too much to do, too much to learn, and that we are overwhelmed. Here are just a few examples I’ve run across in the past months:
- It’s no fun to pay attention to weekly income and expenses.
- It’s no fun to carve out the time needed to work on my business, not in it.
The truth is, your business will flourish the more you weave fun into it. When we look forward to learning something new rather than thinking it will be overwhelmingly difficult, we create energy toward our own success. When we hold our work lightly, it feels much less burdensome and hard. We end up with a more positive energy toward the things we have to do. We all know this, but when it comes to our work we sometimes tend to forget it. We think we have to labor at our work, or keep it separate from our fun.
Dread has no place in your life as an entrepreneur. You didn’t set yourself up to be the boss of you just to feel dread toward your work, did you? 
One way to handle feeling too burdened or overwhelmed is to make sure you inject some fun and things you truly enjoy into your business. Tiny pleasures or large ones, they all help you succeed in your work.
Here’s just a small example. I’ve always loved the color turquoise, so to inject a little bit of fun into the work of updating one of my websites, I used it and asked Facebook friends what color to pair it with. I ended up with a dynamic combo of my fav turquoise paired with peach. I love it, and I had fun I had pulling it together. (You can check out the result at suepainter.com.) How fun it was to read the other day that turquoise has been named “color of the year.”
Often I encourage my clients to plan personal retreats to work out their stuck places and to work on their business planning. These are fun despite being productive. Go where you’ve been wanting to go, or return to a place you enjoy. Not only does the prospect of a trip create a welcoming energy, you are so easily able to work on your business rather than in it, getting away from the day-to-day routine. Go by yourself, or pair up with another entrepreneur who also wants to hammer out some work. You can weave breaks into your day, walk on the beach, get a nice dinner, shop. But for the most part, you are giving yourself uninterrupted time to invest in your business. Don’t sabotage yourself by making this a family vacation, either. It’s not – it’s for YOU.
You can also form a small Mastermind group with people you truly enjoy, and meet by phone or in person to help each other with business issues. Make it fun – meet over a good bottle of wine, take a walk, whatever you enjoy. For a while last year, I did this with another entrepreneur by meeting her to water walk and swim together. We’d do that, then get into the warm therapy pool and stretch both our bodies and our views of our businesses.
Do you have staff or employees in your business? In nice weather, try meeting outdoors with a picnic lunch. Just think about ways to bring joy and pleasure into your endeavor. You’ll benefit both in your spirit and your bottom line. Think easy-peasy, not hard. Think mastery, not failure. Think simple steps, not big overwhelming project. You didn’t put yourself in business to feel fearful, down or out. You put yourself in business to serve others and create a world of work that meets your income and lifestyle wishes. Fun will help you get there, even in small doses!
(c) Sue Painter
Three Ways To Boost Your Income This Month
January 12, 2010
The new year is off and running already! Is your business off and running, too? I don’t know many business owners who would say no to making more income right now – before the end of this month. Here are three ways to boost your income, and if you implement even one of them, you’ll have extra money to show for it.
1. Increase the number of clients or customers you have. This means letting folks who are new to you and your business know about you and the problems you solve. How can you do this quickly and efficiently?
- Ask existing customers for referrals
- Find a business networking group you’ve not been to before and attend
- Send out an e-newsletter and ask recipients to forward it to one person who might benefit from your services
- Ask friends and family to specifically mention your business to one person this week
- Post helpful resources and advice to your social media accounts
- Revamp any existing paid advertising and look for a higher return on investment
- Partner with an aligned business to advertise or do a quick special promotion
2. Increase the average transaction value for existing customers or clients. This means that you offer more value and get a greater price than you are currently getting from your customers. Here are a few ways to do this:
- Raise your rates
- Bundle several of your products or services together and offer them at a special price
- Create a VIP customer category and charge for access to VIP status
- Offer an add-on to your existing product or service. For instance, if you sell jewelry offer a color consultation (for an additional price) with each jewelry consultation or purchase.
3. Increase the frequency of repurchase by existing customers. This means that you devise options designed to encourage customers to come in more often (or order more often).
- Let customers know the benefit of increased services (massage therapy more often than once a month actually boosts the immune system, for instance).
- Package services for frequent buyers. Personal trainers, for instance, might offer a special rate for those who purchase a quarter’s worth of training three times a week.
- Let customers know about new inventory as it arrives to encourage more frequent visits to a retail shop.
- Point out that more frequent services can lead to faster results
The point is that boosting your income quickly doesn’t take months of agonizing over how to do it. Pick one of the three options that you feel will work best for you and get started right now to implement one or more strategies for it. Income doesn’t increase when we THINK about what we might do, income increases when we actually IMPLEMENT something new.
When clients come to me wanting to increase their income quickly they usually are holding that wish as something that is hard to do, scary, or impossible. One of the secrets to boosting your income is to change your own attitude about how easy it is to make more money. If you take action, it happens. If you worry about how you are going to take action then nothing happens and you continue on the gerbil wheel of “how can I do this?”
Do you want to make more money this month? Go look at yourself in a mirror, smile, and declare out loud “I”m off right now to make a bunch more money this month.” It’s pretty tough to do something you don’t believe you can do, so quit thinking you can’t and start telling yourself you can. The how-to’s are right here for you. Pick one, work on it, and let me know how much more money you have in your pocket at the end of this month. 
(c) Sue Painter