Ideas To Help You Power Your Vision From Passion To Profit

What would your business be like if you had clients who want what you offer and who are ready to pay what you deserve? That's the power of the referral: prospective clients who are ready to buy.

Referrals are a very important part of your marketing strategy. Too many solos advertise, hoping people will respond, but rarely do they "prime the pump" by giving referrals first. When I had to restart my business in a new city and a new language, my first step was to make sure I gave out lots of referrals, even though I did not know anyone...and that soon changed - because I demonstrated my credibility through my skill at giving great referrals. People saw that because I was comfortable giving quality referrals, and so they became comfortable sending referrals to me.

In this FREE webinar you will discover what referrals are and learn a powerful technique to give them and receive them, making your prospecting much more effective.

Specifically, you will discover:

- The anatomy of the referral
- Picturing the perfect referral
- The Referral Cycle
- Giving Great Referrals
- Kickstarting Your Referral Stream

Connection info, recordings and other resources after the fold:
(I will be updating this post during the week as I add more resources...)

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As a solopreneur, money is a constant obsession. Some nights I can't get to sleep, with all the what-if's and how-can-I's running around in my head.

I fantasize about winning $50 million at LottoMax, what I would do with it. Of course I would give a million to each of my brothers, as well as my mother, and endow an educational trust for my nieces, nephews and their children (as well as any kids I would have or adopt someday, in the unlikely event that should happen). But what would I do with the rest?

I read the stories of lottery winners, how they say they will buy a new house, a new truck (it always seems to be a truck, doesn't it?), go for a trip down south, then put the rest in savings. Several even say they would not quit their job (yeah, right).

But not me. It would all go into my business. I guess that is the difference between employee thinking and entrepreneur thinking.

How are the money worries of an employee different than that of an entrepreneur?

And, even more importantly, will my money worries ever stop?

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This week's SoloSuccess webinar was a look at five things taught in "Start Your Own Business" seminars. Do they work or not?

One thing I realized when preparing and presenting this webinar was that we are undergoing a seismic shift, one as big as the Industrial Revolution. The shift is from a 20th Century "Economy of Things" to a 21st Century "Economy of Experiences". The rules that govern the capital-focused, finite-mindset Economy Of Things no longer work in an Economy of Experience where the cost of production is zero, the products are intangible and velocity is what counts.

This has generated lots of ideas that I want to explore later on.

Links to the recording and handout after the fold.

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You have probably received an email that starts:  "I came across your website and I would like to propose my services..." or "Please pardon the interruption, but I would like to propose our services..."

What is your first gut reaction when you see this? If you're like me, probably to hit the "delete" button. And if you're feeling particularly peeved, you might hit the "Identify as Spam" while you're at it.

But the temptation to send out these kinds of e-mail is huge. You need to let people know that you exist. And everyone is doing it, right?  So why are you still doing it, even if the return on these kinds of campaigns, whether by e-mail, postal mail, telephone, social media update or ad, or other means, is pitiful?

I agree that it's important to reach out and let people know what you offer. How you do it, though, is the difference between generating indifference or interest. So what is the difference between a message that captures a prospect's interest and one that turns them off?  When is spam, spam?   [Read more →]

Do you sometimes feel that you are drowning in data? For us solopreneurs, staying in touch with what's happening is essential. However, since the volume of data is increasing exponentially, how do you make sense of all...while keeping your perspective and your sanity?

In this FREE webinar, you will understand why learning to surf the data tsunami is important to your business success. I will share with you the tools and techniques that I use (many of them free!) to stay plugged into the hottest ideas in my field, and how I share them with my network in order to attract more and better clients. And after this session, you will be able to do this also!

(Connection details and more resources after the fold:)    [Read more →]

I'm following 257 blogs on my  GoogleReader account - yes, I'm fascinated by the diversity of ideas out there in business, marketing, leadership and success. Here are some articles that caught my eye recently:
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The beauty of the Internet is that I can be searching for something, and stumble onto something else even more precious, like this, from Wikipedia:

The engineer Buckminster Fuller is often cited for his use of trim tabs as a metaphor for leadership and personal empowerment. In the February 1972 issue of Playboy, Fuller said:

"Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary -- the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.

So I said, call me Trim Tab." [Read more →]

Lately I've been "burning out". I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to launch new content simultaneously in English (for my Internet audience) and in French (for my local audience). It got to the point where my head was constantly buzzing with a low-grade headache, and my patience was in short supply.

Then I received a morning thought from Heather Frey, a fitness trainer who I follow on Facebook:

You are unfinished. Yet everyday you race, scramble, and pressure yourself to be finished, which is both impossible and exhausting. Your life is a beautiful project, not a task. It is not to be completed and put away but rather relished, enjoyed and learned from. Your life is not one day after another, it's a span of time with rest in between where you get a chance to grow and build momentum. Your life is suppose to be joyous and your "project" is to figure out how. Stop trying to "finish".

Stay CLEAR...stay FOCUSED...and it will be yours...

Best,
Heather

The moment I read Heather's message, the buzzing stopped, and I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders.

I also then remembered what columnist Roger Cohen wrote in a recent New York Times essay called "Florentine Choices":

In the U.S. culture of achievement, efficiency and logic are prized. In the Italian culture of aesthetics, the artful scam has its place. America acts in the belief that life is linear and leads to the realization of goals. Italy idles in the belief that life is circular and objectives an illusory distraction from pleasure.

Are objectives really an illusion? Did I get so wrapped up in the linear pursuit of trying to "complete", that I started driving myself to exhaustion chasing the impossible? [Read more →]

What does the word "tactical" mean to you? It might conjure up images of heavily armed soldiers storming a building, a swarm of tanks overrunning enemy defenses, a squadron of aircraft dueling it out over the English channel. Tactics rhymes with execution, punch, getting things done.

Are you thinking tactically enough to win?

Most entrepreneurs have a big-picture idea of what they want, recorded in a business plan or vision document or a simple list of goals. But then the document stays in a drawer or on the hard drive as they stumble into reactive mode, day after day, and not accomplishing what they initially said they wanted.

Planning requires two levels of thinking: strategic and tactical. Strategic planning is vision-focused, the "who am I", "what do I want to create" and "why is this important to me".  Strategic is longer term, one, three, five, ten years out. Strategic planning is important, because it gives a context and a purpose for action.

Tactical planning is goal-focused, the "how", the detailed actions needed to move the yardstick forward toward the big vision.

Where the strategic plan can be done in the abstract, because it deals with possibilities and assumptions, the tactical plan is how we dance with reality, respond to the actual situation on the ground, execute to create results. Tactical plans are meant to be short term: created quickly, executed boldly, then superseded by the next tactical plan based on the new situation. Rapid execution of a succession of tactical plans moves you step by step towards realizing the overall strategic plan.

For the entrepreneur, thinking tactically means creating a daily, execution-focused, tactical plan. [Read more →]

As I was doing my morning GoogleReader scan, I came across a sentence relating the famous Chilean solidarity chant: "The People United Will Never Be Defeated". But in my half-awake state, I read "The People United Will Never Be Delighted".  It took me a couple of minutes to realize what I (mis)read, by that time I had clicked too far forward and could not trace back to the original page.

The misread phrase has been rattling around in my head for a few hours, until it connected to an incident I experienced.

If you meet me during a networking event, one question I will certainly ask you is "Is there a specific client or profile of ideal client you are looking for at the moment?" Most of the time the answer I get is "Well, anyone!".

Well, I've just lost interest. What you've communicated to me is that you don't know who you want as a client, therefore I (and anyone I might refer to you) will probably be disappointed with your service...because you don't really care for ME.

The biggest problem I see with solos is that we are so desperate hungry to get clients that we try to be all things to all people. However, there is only one of me and there are many of you. If I want to satisfy every one of you, I will definitely spread myself too thin, and end up delighting no one, especially myself. And if I'm not happy providing my services to you, then what's the point for me to be in business? [Read more →]