Monday Mindset: Are You Stealing From Your Clients?

Posted on 25 February 2013 by

I read a quote by Neil Young the other day ‘Holding back is so close to stealing’.

That really thumped into me with an almighty whack an understanding I’ve had for years – I know all about ‘not playing small’ and ‘going after the big vision’.

But this quote really reminded me that when you’re not playing full out, you’re cheating your potential clients out of the help you could provide them with.

I know it can be frustrating when you’re not serving as many clients as you’d like to.

I also know it can be tempting to give up.

But I see it like this. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people out there who are waiting for you. If they never find you, their lives will be crap. And that will impact on their kids, their husbands and wives, their friends and colleagues at work. And that will impact on their kids, friends and so on and so on. There’s a huge ripple effect of you NOT reaching out to that client.

When I think of them, I have this image I’d like to share. It’s like they’re ‘tagged’ with your name. The person who has the perfect solution to help them overcome this specific problem they have.

But the tag is invisible and no one can see it. And when they do find you, that tag next to their name lights up when they connect and work with you and they’re so glad they found you, and you rock their world.

But if they never find you, that tag remains invisible – it might flicker every now and again as they come into contact with someone else that can help, but that tag won’t shine until they find the person that can help them change everything.

And if your name is the one on their tag, not doing what it takes for them to find you is pretty damned close to stealing, wouldn’t you say?

So even when it’s hard, even when you’re wondering why you set out on this path at all, even when you’re tempted to give up – know that those clients are all sitting out there with your tag – you’ve just got to get in front of them and show them you’re the one.

Monday Mindset: When Less Is More

Posted on 28 January 2013 by

Every have one of those weeks where you look at your to-do list and it’s as long as your arm (and then some?).

As a busy business owner (plus mother, plus housekeeper, plus wife, plus daughter etc etc) sometimes that list can feel overwhelming – which probably means you’re procrastinating and not doing the really important stuff because it’s lost in the huge list.

There are five simple steps you can to quickly and easily to get a handle on this situation: (You’ll need to set aside around an hour to complete the exercise)

1) Make ONE long master list of EVERYTHING that’s in your brain right now, on all your to-do lists and written on scraps of paper tucked in the bottom of your handbag

2) Add up the number of items on that list and divide it by five. That’s the number of items you want left on your list by the end of this exercise. Why? Because the 80:20 rule applies to your to-do list. You’ll get 80% of the results you want from 20% of the activities you have planned. Your job now is to work out which.

3) Go down the list, swiftly, and put an asterisk next to only that number of tasks. Not one more and not one less.

4) For every other item, move it either to a ‘someday maybe list’ (so it’s not lost forever, it’s just not going to be done right now) or let it go and delete it (especially if it’s been on there for over a year and you’ve STILL not done it!)

5) Make sure you now have a clean fresh copy of that remaining 20% of to-dos.

Wiping 80% off your to-do list is one of the fastest ways I know to get out of overwhelm and into focus and moving forwards again.

Share your thoughts and comments…

Monday Mindset: Doing one thing with excellence or many with mediocrity?

Posted on 11 June 2012 by

Nicola Bird, Creator of JigsawBoxThere’s two approaches you can take in business – try and be all things to all people, or do one thing really really well,

Let me explain how that works in our business so you can see what I mean.

Here at JigsawBox we constantly get asked for new features. Can you develop and autoresponder to go with JigsawBox? Can you create your own shopping cart we can integrate? Does JigsawBox do sales pages? Can my clients book appointments into my diary using JigsawBox?

And our answer is ‘no’ and here’s why. Aweber, Infusionsoft and 1ShoppingCart have spent gazillions on perfecting an autoresponder that works. Same with the shopping cart idea. WordPress is already perfect for creating sales pages, and Timetrade is the thing to use for booking client appointments online.

Can you integrate all these things with your JigsawBox? Absolutely. Do we want to divert our resources into trying to provide these for you? Certainly not.

I’m a great one for listening to what your market tell you they want, however we pride ourselves on the fact that we say ‘no’ to a huge percentage of customer requests for development.

We take Steve Jobs’ stance when he quoted Henry Ford who said ‘If I’d asked them what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse’.

Our focus is on making JigsawBox THE number one piece of toolkit for any serious coach. We’re working every day to make it faster, prettier and easier to use. In fact later this week we release the ‘copy module’ and ‘copy package’ feature that you HAVE all been asking for – because this supports our core purpose of providing a simple, elegant, beautiful piece of technology that allows coaches to sell more than their 1: 1 time and have the time, money and freedom to do more of the stuff they love.

So what’s the mindset piece here? List out 10 things you’re going to say ‘no’ to offering as part of your services and get really really focused on that one thing you do really well, better than anyone else in the world.

Monday Mindset: Nothing is good or bad

Posted on 04 June 2012 by

You can mulle...er...do it!‘Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so’ according to William Shakespeare (Hamlet Act 2 scene ii)

I really think the Bard knew what he was talking about here. The way we think about things makes them what they are to us. Specifically, the way we describe things in words makes them ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in our minds. Or anything else – interesting, boring, useful, beautiful or inspiring.

In case you haven’t heard me say this before…

There’s always more than one way to describe a thing.

If the way you currently describe something means that you don’t feel good about it, how about experimenting with different words. Not to change the meaning, just to shift the emphasis.

For example, the complaint,
‘I’m not happy about that’ could be re-worded to, ‘I’m not totally happy about that’. How does that shift your thoughts?

Or the try this one: ‘I’m not good at that, I can’t do it’ transformed to ‘I haven’t discovered the easiest way to do it yet’.

In NLP this is usually described as re-framing. You could also call it taking control of your thoughts. I think of it as shifting focus using language.

But like I said, there’s always more than one way to describe a thing.

_________________________________________________________________________
Guest blog post – written by:
Dianne Lowther Master Trainer of NLP

Dianne Lowther is a Master Trainer of NLP and Principal of Brilliant Minds. She specialises in applications of NLP for leadership and business results.

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