By Joyce
I find the hardest thing I do is help my business clients.
WHAT?
As each day passes, I admire my friends and colleagues who are doctors. Yes, I know, some of you know my opinions on doctors. However, I admire their capabilities to stay distant from the emotional aspects of working with people with dire health issues. People can die. If we are emotionally tied to them we can emotionally die with each one that does, too. Doctors, could shrivel and die within a few years if they could not insulate themselves.
So, could business coaches and trainers.
I find more and more, I care about the success of the business clients I work with. Moreover, I am finding I care more and more about the people behind the business, too. In doing so, it becomes more difficult, this could be age, perhaps, for me to keep a professional distance.
Death for me. Death for my clients. Certain death for friends. I have few close friends. The ones id do I cherish.
My business clients need a business skills trainer, not a friend. Friends are necessary. The two are separate. Business requires skill trainers. The two are diametrically opposed. Friends require shoulders to cry on some times. If I am your friend, I cannot remotely help you or your business.
So, in terms of business building, I am a bit focused, ruthless some say. I would rather help someone build their business then be a friend.
Business success is tied to intimately to one’s vision. There are better friends than me. There are no better business builders than me, however. IT is very, very difficult, but I’d rather help you realize your dreams and vision than be your “friend.”
Few understand it. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a D _ _ m. You can’t live your dreams or unfold your vision unless you have the financial means to do so.
What do you need…..another friend or a business trainer that shows you how to attain and live your vision and purpose?
By Joyce
I am a fan of Epictetus….are you of your own vision?
“You see yourself as a small, insignificant member of our society. Therefore you feel that you should try to be like everyone else, to conform, and to not distinguish yourself from the rest. But I wish to be exceptional, striving to realize my potential so that I may better serve others. Why would you want me to remain ordinary? And if I did, how could I be exceptional?”
Be exceptional with this tip: There are five major areas within every business. Most business owners, even the most successful ones, may not understand them or that they even exist. Ignore them, and you cannot sustain any long term success. Know them , honor them and work them as if they were your children and you can achieve anything you desire and dream of financially and business-wise.
Through an in-depth examination of your business, I can quickly identify which of the five areas will bring the greatest value with the least effort, investment, and time.
By considering each of these five areas, you can more fully understand how and where a partner and or a business coach or coaching team can provide the greatest assistance in the least amount of time with the smallest investment.
Here they are:
Area 1: Suspects/Marketing
This area covers how to generate more and better prospects. It covers marketing
and getting referrals from current and past clients as well as other sources. One small
adjustment in this area can double your profitability.
Area 2: Pre-Sales
Most companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into marketing (Area
and then only convert one out of ten leads.
Why?
There are many reasons, which is why it’s so difficult to know how to correct or change
these numbers. By using our unique processes, systems, tools, and technology, we’re able to help you quickly identify where you may need to make key changes. If we can help you convert just one more lead out of those ten, you could double your sales
with no additional work, leads, or efforts.
Area 3: The Sale
This area is an art and a science. It’s the hardest part to truly understand and duplicate.
By improving Areas 1 and 2, Area 3 will automatically improve. By teaching you and your team how to identify an individual’s personality in 15 seconds, your sales people will experience a new-found excitement, energy, and effectiveness. By using systems, tools, and automated processes along with technology and media, the way you do business will be changed forever.
Area 4: Servicing
Most companies look at servicing as a cost center rather than a profit center. I know,
by studying natural laws, that strong servicing of one’s business can actually
produce more new sales opportunities than Area 3: The Sale.
Area 5: Client for Life
This is the dream and passion of every entrepreneur and CEO. We must aim to keep our clients for life if we’re going to grow and maintain profitability. This is a combination of two key elements:
1. A company culture that believes and practices natural laws for success, and
2. The proper implementation of technology, training, tools, systems, and the
development of people.
A “client for life” mentality will bring the other four areas into a symphony of
success for our clients, vendors, employees, and stockholders/owners.
By Joyce
Shattering The Entrepreneurial Glass Ceiling?
We’ve all heard of the corporate glass ceiling. Women and minorities hit it when they vie for the top executive spots in corporations. It’s transparent because many people think it doesn’t exist. It’s glass because many think it’s there but it’s hard to see. When people do break through it into the Vice President or CEO level it’s called “shattering” the glass ceiling.
There is a glass ceiling for entrepreneurs as well. Most experience it, few recognize it and even fewer break through and shatter it. Most entrepreneurs think it doesn’t exist but it does. It is probably the most challenging obstacle in advancement for the single business owner. The Entrepreneurial Glass Ceiling is the point at which the individual can do no more than they have. There is no more time in a day or tasks to take on. Every entrepreneur hits this ceiling.
Why? Every entrepreneur starts, builds and maintains their business by themselves. There are no days off. There are no vacations. When not in the office, work doesn’t get done and productivity suffers. They have a job, not a business. Entrepreneurs may own the business but it owns them.
The glass ceiling differs from person to person. For some it may be 50,000 dollars a year, for others 400,000 dollars a year and others, 2 million dollars. The bottom line is, all reach a point where they cannot physically or mentally do any more. This is the Entrepreneurial Glass Ceiling where profits max out.
In order to shatter the ceiling and expand a business, entrepreneurs have to take radical action. “Radical” action steps are action items outside the normal level of comfort, things that are against our true nature as an entrepreneur. These are things related to the nasty “h” word, “help.”
Entrepreneurs start their business by the shear will of force. They built it themselves and topped it out with their energy, focus and drive. They can’t go any higher. As a matter of fact, they are going to crash and burn, if they haven’t already, from sheer exhaustion.
The real skill in shattering the ceiling is in being willing to take on new, unfamiliar things. They will need help, hands and competent individuals to do the work. Yes, assistance.
The first step in assistance is understanding you need them. This is foreign for most entrepreneurs and unless you come to this conclusion, you will never shatter the ceiling. Second, getting help does not mean adding employees. In fact, that can contribute to the problem. Today the use of virtual assistants, VA’s can be very profitable and successful for the entrepreneur.
Third, VA’s can be carefully chosen, directed to specific tasks and produce results if approached in the right way, with correct planning and with the right firms that provide talent. Think about it, what will it take for you to break through the Entrepreneurial Glass Ceiling? Will you crash and burn or get the assistance you need?
