Focused Business Action

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For more strategies just like these along with the support to implement them, click to find out about the FBA Circle.

Think about this for a moment: could communicating compassionately with potential clients actually be a marketing tool that builds your business?

After all, people buy from those they know, like and trust. What better way is there to build that trust than by connecting with them and their desires (and objections) for your product or service.

I have shared in other posts strategies to get “over there” with others. These same strategies can help you connect with potential clients and make it more likely that you will convert them to clients. Here are some highlights from those suggestions:

• Maintain eye contact with the speaker. This is not the be all and end all, and it is a great start to getting connected with the person across from you.
• Reflect back what you hear being said when there is a natural pause. If you hold the intention to do this, you will have no choice but to listen.
  • Some people like to hear their exact words being said back to them.
  • Others enjoy hearing their words paraphrased.
  • Or you could ask, “Are you feeling [fill in blank] because you are needing [fill in blank]?

• Voice mirroring – Remember when you were a kid and you used to bug your brother by repeating everything he said? Voice mirroring is just like that. You say the speaker’s words as they come out of their mouth. But you do it inside your head, rather than out loud. Voice Mirroring brings your focus to the words the other person is saying rather than anything going on in your head. So when you find yourself nervous or having trouble concentrating in a conversation, try this for a sentence or two, and see how effective this strategy can be.

Do you want to learn more about connecting compassionately?  Come to our free teleseminar this Tuesday.

Create a Successful and Sustainable Business

Compassionate Communication as a Business Building Tool

Many solo business owners have outstanding skills related to their product or service, but lack the marketing and organizing skills to sustain themselves in doing their life’s work.

On this call, Jeff Brown will share how he created a thriving  business in his own independent practice using principles of abundance  combined with unique and practical action steps.

Jeff will share with you how to:

• Create financial abundance by surrendering limiting beliefs about money
• Enthusiastically promote yourself by releasing self-doubt, false humility and the martyr syndrome
• Respond to potential clients’ concerns and objections and convert them to customers
• Create balance and synergy by diversifying income-earning activities

For more information and to register for this  free conference call on Tuesday, click here.

Drawing on his many year’s experience as a writer, Steven Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire) goes self-help in The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Dubbing itself a cross between Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War and Julie Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Pressfield’s book aims to help readers “overcome resistance” so that they may achieve “the unlived life within.”

Even though the book  is mostly written for frustrated writers struggling with writer’s block, business owners will find the wisdom in this book helpful. After all, you are attempting to channel your creative energies as you develop marketing plans, write copy, or go through the sales process with a potential client.

Whether one wishes to embark on a diet, a program of spiritual advancement or an entrepreneurial venture, it’s most often resistance that blocks the way. To kick resistance, Pressfield stresses loving what one does, having patience and acting in the face of fear.

Here are some selections from the book that struck me as particularly poignant:

I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.

Look in your heart. Unless I’m crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I’m crazy, you’re no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think resistance isn’t real? Resistance will bury you.

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement, but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

Seeking support from friends and family is like having your people gathered around at your deathbed. It’s nice, but when the ships sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. ~ Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

What came up for you when you read the selections from the book? Have you read the book? Feel free to share with us in the comments.

This past week I asked the Fans/Likes on my Facebook page what creative uses they had for their business cards besides what they’re meant for. And being wonderful, creative, and always up for a worthwhile distraction, they obliged. Here are the top 10 ideas they came up with:

1. Put them in luggage tags instead of writing the same ol’ boring name and address
2. Use them as a bookmark
3. Write on the back for quick notes when you don’t have any scratch paper
4. Use them as name labels for books
5. Clean out the keyboard — “really gets those mini-dust bunnies and some other stuff that I try not to analyze too much!”
6. Use them to clean tiny crevices around the house (like the space next to the oven, around the bathroom sink, in between tiles…you get the idea)
7. Use as labels on those black file cabinets. Just cut a little off the edge, write what you want on the back with a marker and slip it into the label holder.
8. Build a card castle
9. Make cubes (this is COOL!)
10. Clean between your teeth instead of dental floss (GROSS!)

Do you have any more suggestions to add to the list? Let us know in the comments.

Wow, What a Great Business Card! 15 Tips to Make Your Next One Even Better

To learn more about using your business card as a marketing tool that will actually do what it’s meant to do, join us this Tuesday for the Marketing Action Seminar.

You will learn:

• key words and other elements to attract a wider spectrum of clients
• top 7 elements to include on an effective business card
• 8 things that are least liked about business cards

For more information and to register for this free conference call, click here.

For many of us entrepreneurial folks, our minds are usually moving at a mile a minute. I call this “busy brain” and it is both a gift and a challenge. It is a gift because it fills your mind with great ideas which make you the creative person you are. It can also be a stumbling block because there’s so many ideas coming at you that you never take the time to implement any of them. Here’s a strategy to manage your ideas and connect them with action items. And, you don’t have to slow your busy brain down to a snail’s pace.

Mindmapping takes advantage of the tendency of the mind to work in short, intense bursts by allowing you to “dump” your ideas and thoughts onto paper in just a few minutes. This process allows information to flow freely out of your busy brain and it is organized into clusters as it flows from your mind to the page. This is brainstorming with a twist.

1. To begin you only need a piece of paper and something to write with.
2. In a box in the center of your paper, write one or two words which capture the essence of the problem you want to solve or the project you want to implement.
3. Then, as ideas start to pour out related to the topic, write down key words of those thoughts and connect them to the focus with lines.It is critical that you use just key words, because you want to capture your thoughts quickly-just enough to stimulate your memory when you go back later to review.
4. As each idea is generated which relates to one of the branches, write the key word(s) and associate it to the branch with a line.
5. Allow yourself to put down everything that comes to your mind. The longer you keep information in play, the more opportunity that information has to make new connections, to bounce off other ideas and information and to score new ideas.

• Business writing – Whether you are organizing material for a report or exploring an idea for a new business venture, mindmapping will help you bring depth and richness to your writing.
• Project Management – Mindmapping is an excellent way to begin “chunking” down a project.
• Managing Meetings – Much of our work time is spent in meetings. Mindmapping gives you a way to make this time more productive.
• To Do Lists – If standard “to do” lists don’t work for you, try this method.
• Presentations - Mindmapping gives you an easy way to prepare for speeches; it helps your audience understand and remember more of what you are presenting.
• Note-taking – This visually interesting method of note taking allows you to organize information as you receive it, add connections, and increase retention.
• Personal growth – Mindmapping taps into your deepest thoughts and provides an effective method of discovering our inner selves.

How might you use mindmapping in your business. Let us know by leaving a comment.