As a solo-entrepreneur, who do you turn to when you need help, advice or just plain support to grow your business?
If you are like many other entrepreneurs, it might sometimes feel as if nobody really understands exactly what you are doing. Thus, you’re hesitant to ask for advice because you’re not sure if people can give any good advice.
Perhaps it even feels you need to figure out everything on your own – the hard way – and that this is just a part of the journey towards success.
Luckily that’s not true at all!
What I’ve learned over the years is you don’t need to struggle all alone. And there’s actually an easy way to speed up your success.
Build a business support system and learn from people who has already “being there and done that”?
This way, you save a lot of time, because often implementing only one little technique shared by one of your trusted advisers, can make something easy which was once very hard.
It also saves a lot of frustration because you can avoid making the same mistakes that others have made.
So, here are 5 types of individuals or groups that I’ve included in my business support system and find tremendously helpful in growing my business. Perhaps people or groups like these can help you too.
1. Work with a mentor or coach.
Having a fresh pair of eyes that focuses specifically on helping you grow your business is invaluable. The right mentor / coach can help you define the actions you need to take, act as a sounding board, help you define your goals, give personalized support, share appropriate know-how, systems and tools you haven’t thought of before, give you the necessary confidence and hold you accountable to implement the plans for growing your business. Without a coach, I wouldn’t have grown my business so quickly.
2. Join a mastermind group.
Being part of a group of like-minded individuals that regularly meet and with whom you can discuss problem areas in your business or just brainstorm new ideas can do wonders for your business. It is like tapping into the collective experience, insights and wisdom of a group of people all with one goal of supporting you to grow your business while simultaneously growing their own businesses.
3. Work with an accountability buddy.
This is someone that you can get in contact with on a weekly basis to participate in regular accountability calls. You share your goals with each other as well as the action steps you want to take and then keep each other accountable to take those actions and reaching those goals. This really ensures that you continue to make progress, implement what you say you want to do and stay inspired to grow your business.
4. Network with other business colleagues.
This can be other solo-entrepreneurs or business owners either in the same industry or in another industry. Talking to other business owners, even when they are not directly in your industry or line of work is a great way to tap into advice and expertise that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get hold of. It can also stimulate your thinking, allow you to look at things differently and help you generate new ideas to implement.
5. Regularly talk to your spouse, a trusted family member or friend about your business.
Even though they might not be an entrepreneur or know and understand exactly what you do, they are not wrapped up in the day to day workings of entrepreneurship, and can often provide alternative or fresh insights to stimulate ideas and help you see things differently. My hubby is an engineer and he does not fully understand entrepreneurship or even what I’m doing, but his analytical way of thinking has brought many a-ha moments to my business.
Forming a support system or a group of trusted advisers for you and your business can be invaluable to your long-term success. Most successful entrepreneurs have one or more of the above included in their support systems, because they know they can’t do it completely alone.
So, who are the members of your business support system? Do you have one in place?Share your comments with us below.
To Your Success
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Everybody wants to have more clients, make more money, be recognized in their industry and feel good about themselves. It is life and part of having a business.
Unfortunately there is no magic wand that can make all of this happen.
This is a Tweetable
The plain truth is: What you are and what you become is totally up to you. Click to Tweet
I was recently confronted with questions like:
• “Who motivates the motivator?”
• “What do you do with information you receive at seminars, online training, webinars, teleconferences, email newsletters etc. etc.?”
• “What will be different in your business a year from now?”
• “When are you going to implement what you’ve learned?”
…and again came to the conclusion that it is totally up to you to make your mark.
To go from ordinary to extraordinary you should “Decide to Do”.
Running your own business requires more than just following the flow of things that are thrown your way, it involves actively steering your business in the direction that you want it to go into.
It requires from you to:
Be your own motivator;
Sift through the sea of information that you receive on a daily basis and take action on the things that can help you make your mark;
Set and/or renewgoals and targets in order to grow your business to its full potential;
And the most important one – Implement what you’ve decided to do.
The truth is:
“There is a fine line between dreams and reality;
it’s up to you to draw it.” ~B. Quilliam~
So, I want to challenge you today to draw the line; step over the line; erase the line …whatever it takes for you. Just make a conscious decision to start making thing happen in your business and in your life…
Thank you for reading my blog! I truly value you!
To Your Success!
Grab your copy of my FREE report: “9 Essential Tactics to Get More Clients”
PS: The greatest compliment you can give me is when you share this with others. It’s really easy! Just use the buttons below. Thanks! I sincerely appreciate it.
It’s easy and comfortable to network online, right? You can sit in front of your PC, with no make-up, still in your PJ’s and have ground-breaking conversations with clients, prospects, partners, colleagues and friends.
However it is important for us as solo-preneurs who primarily work from home, to regularly break out of that “online” comfort zone, get away from the house and meet and network with like-minded people face-to-face at live business conferences, networking events and workshops.
Attending live events can be one of the most inspiring and transformational ways to boost your business results. It completely remove you from the pressures of your daily business activities, and give you an opportunity to get inspired, revitalized and motivated to take your business to the next level.
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Attending live events is an inspiring and transformational way to boost your business results. Click here to tweet.
Here Are 8 Great Benefits of Attending Live Events
1. Spending dedicated time on YOUR business.
We are often so focused on doing great work and helping our clients, that we do not spend the same amount of focus and time on growing our own business. Attending live events is a great opportunity to give 100% attention to your own business. At these events, you are the focus and can explore new strategies and plans to implement in your business.
2. Learning valuable information.
Live events usually have one or more keynote speakers who share their information and knowledge freely. This is a great time to learn from the experts and to stay updated with new technologies or trends in your industry while enjoying the company of others.
3. Meeting the experts
It’s a great opportunity to meet the experts. You might be following someone for a while and are just dying to meet them in person. At live events you can do that! As this might be your only change, make the most of your time and go introduce yourself. You never know where that connection may lead.
4. Meeting like-minded individuals.
People who show up to live events are the ones who are serious about growing their business. They are searching for solutions, open for new connections and are willing to take the necessary action to make things happen in their business. It is therefore so refreshing to have a conversation with someone who shares some common goals with you or people who are in the same industry, because they understand what you do and where you are coming from. For me it’s so inspiring to be around others who are just as passionate about their business as you are about yours and to have open discussions about it.
5. Getting Inspired and Motivated
When you go to events with an open mind, it provides a ton of inspiration and motivation. You not only get inspired and motivated by the speakers, and can go away with a ton of new exciting ideas to implement, but you also get motivated and inspired by just being in a room full of advancing entrepreneurs.
6. Sharing best practices
The really exciting thing about live events is that you can have really good, relaxing conversations with people and still learn a lot from others. Everybody talks about the content of the presentations and shares their own experiences, tips and strategies openly. It is thus a good place to find out what is working for somebody else that maybe you haven’t applied to your business yet. Getting all these new ideas and valuable learning from others are often priceless.
7. Making high-quality connections
Attending a live event give you the opportunity to come in contact with some amazing people that you may never have had the chance to meet in your office or even while networking online. Some of these people can become a potential joint venture partner, a new colleague, a client, someone you can refer to others or who can refer you, or even just a new friend. The collaboration and camaraderie from these new acquaintances, friendships and joint ventures helps to keep you motivated and excited about moving forward.
8. Receiving discounts on materials, courses and programs to deepen your learning
A really cool benefit is that the speakers at live events typically offer special discounts and promotions on their products and programs to attendees. This makes it a great opportunity to get access to their training programs and products at more affordable rates.
So, here is what I hope you take from this article: One of the best investments you can make in your business is to invest in continuous learning by attending events because it complements and supports any investment you make in high-quality training products and programs.
Attending live events, such as conferences, workshops, and networking events will empower you to go bigger than you’ve ever thought possible. It will expand your thinking and open you up to many new opportunities that otherwise may not be available to you…and once you’re back home, you’ll be excited and recharged to jump in and take your business to the next level with all your new knowledge and connections!
To Your Success
PS. At my Purpose to Prosperity Networking Events on July 3rd and July 18th in South Africa, you’ll experience all 8 of these benefits! ;-). Register to attend here.
Thank you for reading my blog!
Grab your copy of my FREE report below:
“9 Essential Tactics to Get More Clients”
It’s easy enough for most women to be friendly and helpful with people we meet for the first time in a social setting … but when we are confronted with doing the same in a business-like setting, it’s unnerving and it makes us feel uncomfortable.
So, let’s be honest for a moment. In the beginning, face-to-face networking and deliberately going out to meet new people (peers, clients, colleagues etc. ) is tough…. perhaps because we associate it with “hard labor”… (You know…net-“working”) …..and because it sounds like a “business activity” it’s easy to think that we need to act in a different way than when we meet people socially.
But, what if you can change your mindset about networking?
What if networking is not about what you can get out of it (new clients, more sales, higher income etc.) but about what you can offer to others (help, assistance, information, friendship etc.).
This is a Tweetable
Networking is not about what you can get out of it but, about what you can offer to others.
This might seem strange at first, but there’s a very powerful saying telling us “What you sow, you will reap”.
So, when you do networking with the mindset of helping someone by simply sharing your knowledge, listening to others, connecting people, giving referrals etc. etc. you will become a powerful resource for other people. You will not only gain business trust and credibility – which by the way is the basis of any long-lasting and profitable networking relationship – but also reap the benefits from forming powerful business relationships that in the end will benefit your business.
In this new way of networking, set the intention to…
Just be you
Meet interesting people and helping others. Thistotally changes the dynamic and makes is so much easier. It will also boost your sense of purpose and self-worth and lift that overwhelming pressure of getting a new client.
Create value for others. You do that by being genuinely interested in what people are doing. Listen to what they say and then offer friendly and helpful suggestions when you can. The more value you create, the more it will come back to you many times over.
Understand their needs and what’s important to them first, before you tell them about yours.
Build mutually beneficial relationships. Even when you may not directly be able to help the person you meet, you may know someone else within your current network who might. And vice versa, they might not be able to help you directly, but they may introduce or recommend you to people who might be able to help or become a client.
Be a connector. Network with people on different levels and in different industries. Growing your network outside of your industry will make you more valuable to people in your immediate industry. With a broad network you can be the person that connects people across industries.
Before you know it, you’ll find yourself having a good time, developing strong relationships and attracting loads of referrals and new clients.
Some Practical Tips
When you meet someone, repeat her name, e.g. “Pleased to meet you, Jane”. This will reinforce her name into your subconscious and help you remember it better.
Appear Confident- even if it feels you are falling to pieces.Don’t stand around the edges of the room, waiting for someone to approach you. Purposely walk towards a person or a group that has already formed and ask: “May I join you?” The answer will always be yes.
Smile. By smiling you become more approachable, warm and inviting to others. A genuine smile will also put your nerves at ease.
Wear an outfit that is comfortable and makes you feel confident.
Prepare and practice a 30s introduction for when people ask you what you do. Your 30s intro is just a short snapshot about you and what you do. Try to include a major benefit of how you help your clients (e.g. I’m Francis van Wyk. I’m a marketing mentor and I help women entrepreneurs to get more clients). Keep your 30s intro simple, natural and in plain English. Your goal is for anyone to understand and connect with what you’re saying…. and when your 30s intro hits home, they’ll immediately respond with something like “Wow, I need to speak to you…” 🙂
Prepare a couple open ended questions that gets people to talk about their business. The truth is, people love to talk about themselves and what they do. When you ask the questions and then listen carefully, you can learn a lot from the answers and also identify more opportunities to be of help.
Never, ever scan the room while talking to someone. It is just plain rude.
Rather make good eye contact and have sincere conversations.
Never fill both hands with a snack plate AND a drink. Have at least one hand free for greeting people and/or accepting a business card.
Mingle and move around. It doesn’t help to chat only with people you know or with only one person for the entire event. Approach people who you don’t know and start a conversation. (Trust me, it gets easier.)
Have your business cards within easy reach when someone asks you for one.
Use the cards of the people you meet to write down something interesting about this person or something about the conversation you want to remember. You can mention that in your follow up.
Make it a point to follow up, but be strategic in how you do it. Think about what benefit you can bring to them and always ask what will be the best way to stay in touch – whether it be email, phone or via social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
Here’s what I hope you take from this article:
Networking is great for business. It’s doable and it becomes easier the more you do it. PLUS, when you enter the room with the intention to help, it reduces the pressure and you’ll often be amazed at the quality of the conversations and the quality of business relationships you can create. You can do it!
Happy Networking!!
Grab your copy of my FREE report: 9 Effective Ways to Get More Clients
Did you know that you can save a lot of time, get more clients and run your business more effectively when you get organized and start using systems for everything you do?
Doing marketing, drawing clients into your pipeline, staying in touch with prospects and clients, scheduling client consultations, converting prospects into clients, keeping records of client communication, billing clients, tracking income and expense etc. etc. are all tasks you do on a regularly (even daily) basis. When you create a system around each of these tasks or activities, it makes it easier to do; it saves time and can even run on autopilot when you are not in the office.
But let us first clarify what a system is…
Without going too much into details, a system is a set of steps, methods or procedures you follow to carry out a specific activity, perform a task, or solve a problem.
Thus, to create a system for a specific activity in your business you’ll need to know all the specific steps you follow – from start to end – to complete that activity.
In practice, creating systems do not need to be complicated. The only requirement is the systems should work best for YOU and YOUR business. Ultimately the purpose of a system is to save you time and to put most of your repetitive tasks on autopilot so they can take care of themselves with no to minimum involvement from you.
Systems save time and you can put most of your repetitive tasks on autopilot. Click to Tweet
So, let’s look at a few examples of how you can get organized and use systems to get more clients, while saving a lot of time.
Doing Marketing: Let’s say you frequently attend networking events as one of your marketing strategies. A simple system to develop around networking is to schedule the dates of all the networking events in your calendar, set a reminder for e.g. 2 days before the event to allow you to prepare if needed. This way you won’t forget about the event and will be well prepared when you attend. That is a simple system that can help you stay consistent in attending in-person events, saves time since you know it is scheduled and you will be reminded in time and you’ll feel more confident when you show up, since you had ample time to prepare.
Filling your Client Pipeline:An example of a system to fill your client pipeline is to use your website and email marketing software to capture the contact details of visitors to your website when they sign up for your free offer. You can direct all your marketing efforts (the people you meet at in-person and networking events, all your off-line and online marketing) to your website and let your well-oiled system takes care of getting these web visitors into your client pipeline so you can stay in touch with them. This is a system that you can set up once and then almost forget about… and the best thing about it – it runs on autopilot while you sleep or are miles away on vacation
Staying in touch:This is extremely important to ensure your prospects don’t forget about you and for you to build relationships with your prospects and keep your services and offerings in front of them. One way to stay in touch is to publish a regular ezine (electronic newsletter). An example of creating a system around your e-zine is to create a list of topics you want to share with your audience on regular intervals and then to schedule those topics into an editorial calendar of when each will be send to your list. An important part of this system is also to schedule the time in your calendar to write the content and populate your email marketing system. When you use software like e.g. Aweber you can write your content in advance and schedule it to go out on a specific date, thus saving you time and still keeping the communications go out when you take a well-deserved 4 week vacation.
Convert prospects into clients: Once people are interested in working with you, a new client conversion procedure or system can do wonders for your business. An example of a system here is to have a form on your website where prospects can enquire about your services. Once the form is completed you can use an automated system to set-up an initial complimentary Discovery Session where you get together on the phone to see if you are a good fit for working together. Then you can use a specific pre-developed script or format to conduct the discovery session to lead your prospect from just inquiring about your services to becoming eager and willing to work with you. So you do not have to take hours to prepare for a first consultation, because your system takes care of most of it.
New Client Intake: An example of a system when a client says “yes” to working with you is to have a client information pack (or welcome pack) ready to send to this client. The information pack and client communications can be pre-developed and then customized per client to save you lots of time and prevent you from re-inventing the wheel for each new client.
With workable and automated systems in place, you can work more effectively, get more clients and accomplish most of your daily client related administrative tasks in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Systems save you time and much frustration. It also allows you to spend your time taking a well-deserved break OR getting more of those “yummi” clients and making more money.
Your assignment for today:
Pick one thing. . .just one thing in your business and create a system around it.
Start documenting and write down all the steps you take to complete that.
Then, evaluate what you can do to automate / facilitate all the repetitive activities to help you save time with this in future.
The ultimate goal is to create systems that don’t require your attention every minute of the day.
To Your Success
Grab your copy of my FREE report: “9 Effective Ways to Get More Clients”
Napoleon Hill said in his book Think and Grow Rich that “One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.”
The moment you’ve decided to start your own business and enter the entrepreneurial world, you will experience many up’s and down’s. Sometimes you even run into situations that are so bad you just want to throw in the towel and quit.
The truth however is: if you want to succeed, you need to keep going!
Ignore the setbacks, ignore the temporary defeats, ignore the people who want to bring you down, ignore the “no’s” – and keep going! You might be near!
Even when it’s really tough, stay focused on your dream, learn from the setbacks, make some course corrections, get the help you need and just keep going!
Today, I want to share with you one of the inspiring stories in Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” about this exact situation. The story is titled…
“Three Feet From Gold…
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.”
An uncle of R. U. Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.
After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.
The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.
Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again — all to no avail.
Finally, they decided to QUIT.
They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That is exactly where it was found!
The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up. Most of the money that went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R. U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.
Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.
Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he STOPPED three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say `no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”
Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stickability” to the lesson he learned from his “quitability” in the gold mining business.
Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do.
More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.”
So when you feel you’re ready to give up, don’t quite! You may be three feet from gold!
To Your Success
PS – If you enjoyed this article, you’re welcome to share! I’ve provided options just below to make it easy for you.
PPS – While you are here, grab a copy of my guide on: 9 Essential Tactics to Get More Clients below!
Francis van Wyk is an experienced business and client attraction mentor who supports women solo-preneurs with planning and achieving business success online.
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As a solo-entrepreneur, who do you turn to when you need help, advice or just plain support to grow your business?
