Rainmaker Strategies

Business Coaching

Multiplying Your Appeal

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I want to pose a hypothetical to you.

Suppose you’re an attorney specializing in contract law. How many competitors do you have out there?

Plenty.

And suppose you speak and write fluent Mandarin.

How many now?

Not so many. You’ve radically reduced the pool of candidates someone needing those two skills can hire.

By virtue of possessing that additional language skill, you just made yourself far more appealing to certain prospective clients and cut a whole lot of your would-be competitors out of the running.

I tell young people all the time, if you want to stand out and essentially write your own ticket in life, combine specialties that very few people possess in combination, but that are solely needed in certain niches.

The same goes for your business.

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What’s Better Than Being Thankful?

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You hear a lot these days about the benefits of simply taking the time to express gratitude for all the blessings you have in your life.  It’s actually quite a big deal.  The practice of expressing gratitude just puts you in a good state … mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  It positively affects your health …and pretty profoundly at that.

At Thanksgiving time, we call these expressions of gratitude “being thankful.”  Same thing.

Are you truly thankful?  Do you express how grateful you are on a regular basis?  Do you actually take time to catalogue and give thanks for all the stuff you love about your life?

I’ll bet you do, and that’s good, because when you’re grateful for what you have, you’re concentrating on the positive and … as the law of attraction says … you get more of what you focus on.  Be grateful and you create more of what you’re grateful for.  It’s the perfect example of a virtuous cycle.

But there’s something more powerful even than gratitude / being thankful when it comes to attracting the things you want to you.

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Struggle Less. Get Better Results.

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In business, as in life, you’ll always find yourself in one of three places. You either have your mojo workin’ … you’re stuck in neutral … or you’re losing ground. In other words, you’re trending up, sideways or down.

I want to map this trend model onto your client acquisition and retention efforts and do two things. Examine what your success … or lack thereof … can mean to you professionally and personally. And look at what you can do to make it easier to be successful.

If you’re bringing in new clients and the folks you have are happy to stay right where they are, great. Give yourself some credit. You’re doing something right. But stick around. You may still be working too hard for the results you’re getting.

If you’re struggling to just hold your ground or you’re actually losing clients despite your best efforts, it’s time to take a hard look at how you’re going about marketing and client retention. Because if what you’re doing is taking a whole lot of time and effort and straining you to the max, you’re at risk of burning out.Read More

It Has To Be You

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It has to be you.

I’d like you to consider that sentence from 3 different perspectives.

First, if you’re going to be successful as a service provider, you have to be comfortable in your professional skin, so to speak.

It has to be you in the sense that the work has to fit you. It has to play to your strengths and you have to like doing what’s required of you. It may seem obvious, but you can’t hate your job. You can’t even feel lukewarm about it … for lots of reasons, both personal and professional.

But there’s one reason that stands out for me. If you don’t love, or at least enjoy, what you do, how in the world do you expect to successfully market your services? It’d be a charade.

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A Profound Advantage

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The Romans gave us a wonderful expression … ceteris paribus … which roughly translates as “all other things being equal.”

The idea springs from our natural desire to figure out what the truly “active ingredients” are in any success formula.

All other things being equal, why it is that some people are sought after and get paid very well for their services, while others who offer the very same services merely scrape by?

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Can You Network Too Much?

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Networking can be a fun and rewarding way to build your business if you do it the right way.

If you’re just starting out or you have a way to go to build a full book of business, it’s smart to spend the better part of your time marketing yourself.

And along with speaking and creating strategic alliances, networking is one of the big three methods for doing that in the most powerful way possible … face to face.

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When You Care More Than Your Client

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Wait a minute. It’s not supposed to work like that.

Like what? Where you care more about your client’s success than she does.

And yet, it’s something I see coaches, lawyers, CPAs, and other service providers doing on a pretty regular basis.

Sometimes you just really get invested in your client’s success.

That’s great.

Sometimes more than they get invested in their own success.

Uh, that’s not so great.

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Is Your Business On Vacation?

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It’s so tempting.

The weather’s great, the days feel lazier, the kids are out of school, there are so many fun things to do … and you think, “Well, why not take some time off in June, July, and August and really kick back into gear in September? Nothing much happens in the summer anyway.”

Great plan … except for one thing.  Momentum.  Lost momentum to be precise.

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Make It A Game, Not A Contest

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Let’s say you want something.  You get 89% of what you asked for.  How would you feel?

Pleased?  Upset?  Which would you focus on?  The 89% you gained or the 11% you came up short?

I know it depends on the circumstances and how attached you are to reaching your original goal.

In my case, I was very attached.  I wanted to lose weight … 83 pounds to be exact.

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