REACHING…
Over a decade of Sandy’s weekly written articles on strategies and motivation for your business and your life.
Be First, Be Daring, Be Different
Some time ago, I opened up a fortune cookie at the conclusion of a Chinese dinner and read this:
“To Be Successful in Business Be First, Be Daring, Be Different.”
I dropped the fortune into my nearly empty tea cup. But then it struck me that this little slip of paper extolled the exact advice I give many of my clients—not just about business, but about careers and as a way to live their lives. It really did say something about someone’s future! I dug the wet fortune out of the cup with a fork, dried it off and saved it.
These days almost everything on the market has become a commodity–like apples in a supermarket. If you want one, you look for the juiciest one you can get at the lowest price. You don’t particularly care what farm it came from or who the distributor is. Twenty or so years ago, if you wanted a computer, your choices were an IBM (First), an IBM “clone” (Daring), or an Apple computer like the MacIntosh (Different). Today, however, if you want a computer, you may still want a brand name, but unless it’s an Apple (Different), you are unlikely to care which brand name it is. In other words, name-brand computers have, for most of us, become . . . well . . . expensive apples—commodities that are not unlike fruit in the supermarket.
Has it happened in your industry? To you? Does your business or product or service look to your customers and clients like supermarket fruit? Is the only way you can think of to compete by price, resulting in smaller margins, less revenue and significantly weaker client/customer loyalty? When you’re First or Daring or Different, your competitors are the supermarket fruit, but you’re not one of them. You’ll attract the people who don’t want just any apple. They want YOU.
Take a stab at being First, Daring or Different:
- Change your business. If you’ve been telling people you run a [whatever you do] business that works with anyone and everyone, stop doing that. Be the number one company in a category. Be the one that dares to _____. Be the only one around whose fee structure is _____. First, Daring, Different.
- Articulate your unique value to your customers. With so many choices, why should they be working with you and not someone else in the same business? Do what you can to keep price from being the distinguishing factor.
- Get help with your brand, your leadership, and your services. Turning yourself from an apple into anything else is never easy. That’s one reason why top executives hire coaches.
Whether you get help or not, to be successful in business be First, be Daring, or be Different. And keep REACHING…
What’s your WHY?
“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” ~ Simon Sinek
Leaders who have worked with me know that I believe that business owners and professionals need to be crystal clear about their answers to three questions:
- Who do you work with? (Who are your customers/clients?)
- What do you give them that they want or need? And
- Why will they buy this product or service from YOU (and not someone else or using some do-it-yourself workaround)?
In his eye-opening TED Talk several years ago, author Simon Sinek talked about how communicating your WHY is the most important factor in growing your business. Sinek drew what he called the “Golden Circle”:
“Most companies sell from their WHAT,” he told the audience. He used computer companies as his example:
We sell great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. Wanna buy one?
“The most successful companies,” he continued, “sell from their WHY.” He used Apple as his example:
[In] everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. (WHY) The way we challenge the status quo is making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. (HOW) We just happen to make great computers. (WHAT) Wanna buy one?
Sinek went on to tell his audience that leading with its WHY allows Apple to sell other electronics products with similar ease, while other well-known computer and peripheral companies had difficulty launching related products.
What’s your WHY? What do you believe that drives what you do and who you do it with? Once you are clear on that, you can talk about WHAT you do and HOW you do it.
If you want help figuring this out, contact me. And always keep REACHING…
P.S. If you’re interested, you can find Sinek’s talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
I disappeared quietly…
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Leading vs. Managing
Image credit: Pixabay
Leading and managing have become so synonymous with each other in our language that an employee might refer to his boss as either. But the two terms are not interchangeable.
RetailerNow offers succinct definitions for leaders and managers: leading serves as the heart, they propose, while managing acts as the brains.
Managers come up with the vision for the company and then establish systems in order to enable their team to reach the goal they have set. They establish measures to determine whether or not their team is staying on track.
Leaders, on the other hand, inspire and motivate the group to work together to achieve the objective. They monitor the progress of the team, urging them on to meet those goals.
So, is a good CEO more of a leader or a manager? According to BFS Capital, he or she should have both skillsets. It’s important for CEOs to be the visionaries for where they want their company to go. At the same time, however, they need to do their part to motivate and inspire their employees so that they are excited to get into their work every day.
This is particularly true in small companies–especially startups. In larger organizations with larger resources, leadership and managerial roles may sometimes be handled by different individuals.
Inc.com provides a helpful guide that differentiates the tasks performed by managers and leaders so that the people performing these functions will better understand what is expected of them.
A recent Forbes article also provides some examples that help CEOs recognize the difference between the responsibilities of leader and manager in a company. The article focuses on Coca-Cola’s CEO Doug Ivester, who makes a conscious effort to provide direction and guidance to his managers so that they can make decisions over matters under their control.
The article points out that in any organization, there should be a clear understanding between CEOs and their managers with regard to who performs which roles so there won’t be any overlapping. It also stresses the importance of collaboration, pointing out that neither the leader nor the manager will be able to perform his/her job effectively without working closely with the other.
While in any organization, roles should be clearly defined, the CEO still retains the ultimate responsibility to be both a leader and a manager. But what if a CEO is good at only one of these skillsets and not the other?
In ’What Will You Earn Your ‘Oscar’ Doing?’, I talked about the importance of mastering your craft. If one of these aspects–being a leader or a manager–is not natural for a CEO, he should look to develop these skills. By consistently self-reflecting to see his weaknesses in one or both areas (and, of course, working with a coach) he can take steps towards improvement.
If you’re a CEO, work on your skills as both a leader and a manager, and keep REACHING…
Sandy
What’s your compelling message?
This month, I began working with the advisors at a national financial institution under an exclusive agreement which limits my ability to take on new financial advisor clients. I will be finishing up my work with current advisor clients and will not be taking on new advisors.
I will continue to work with CEOs and professionals in other fields (attorneys, consultants, coaches, etc.) And my e-letters will return to their motivational and business advice roots.
While my regular one-on-one clients are generally entrepreneur-CEOs of companies that have grown well past the $1 million earnings mark, I have partnered with a couple of incredible business consultants to create online learning centers for businesses that are either just starting or established but generating less than $1 million annually: our Business Leadership Training Center and our Business Startup Training Center.
Today’s article is aimed at these smaller businesses and professionals, who often spend most of their time trying to find and convert new customers and clients…
Does Your Marketing Grab Your Prospects’ Attention?
Do your marketing messages compel your prospects to buy what you sell? Do they tap into their basic emotions? Are you leveraging the fact that most prospects buy on emotion and only then justify their purchase with logic?
Your marketing must convince your prospects that you offer “extraordinary value,” and resonate with them emotionally.
Simply telling them that you’re the best at what you do, or that you give the best service or care about them won’t work. You can’t just say you’re trustworthy, reliable and exceptional. That’s the same thing your competition says. Prospects won’t believe you. Instead, you must find a compelling way to educate them as to why you’re trustworthy, reliable and exceptional.
To consistently attract more clients to your business…and to effectively convert prospects into clients… it’s critical that you create a series of short, clear and concise messages that compel your prospects to instantly want to know more. These short messages must focus on the benefits your business provides to them, and on the value you provide that your competition doesn’t. Here’s an example:
“I help confused and frustrated guys find that perfect discounted diamond that has the highest quality, the lowest price and is backed up with the boldest customer protection guarantee in the industry.”
Compelling messages about what you do and the value you provide will have prospects seeking you out for additional information. They’ll be”pre-qualified.”
Find a compelling message that resonates with new prospects. When you have something that works, it can be incorporated into scripts that you or your staff can use to convert those into paying clients.
Effective marketing is the key to small business success, and the small business owner who learns how to do it will dominate his or her industry.
If you’d like to learn more about this and other topics addressed in our inexpensive, powerful online training, take a Test Drive at http://businessleadershiptrainingcenter.com/guidedtour
And always keep REACHING…
Sandy
Ask for What You Need.
Let’s talk movies. My father loved the “lone hero” characters played by Gary Cooper, who faced off with all of the bad guys virtually solo in the 1952 movie High Noon.
To my dad, Cooper represented the idea that action heroes had to find their way by themselves. Dad believed that strong, successful people don’t ask for help—and while he was always quick to help others, he found it almost impossible to ask anyone to help him.
I loved my father, but he died broke and broken. And I believe that a large part of the reason for this was his view on what it takes to be successful.
He had missed one of the main points of his favorite Gary Cooper movie. Cooper’s marshal, Will Kane, asked everyone in town for help—they were just all too afraid to stick their necks out. In fact, soon after the movie’s release, veteran “lone hero” John Wayne was publicly infuriated that someone had actually made a Western wherein a marshal asked for assistance. Wayne found a counter-vehicle for himself in the 1959 film Rio Bravo, in which he played a sheriff who didn’t ask anyone for anything.
Personally, I’m a fan of the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny, with Joe Pesce and Marissa Tomei. In the ending dialog, Vinny becomes upset when he realizes that he didn’t succeed all on his own. His fiancé, Mona Lisa Vito, mocks him:
You know, this could be a sign of things to come. You win all your cases, but with somebody else’s help, right? You win case after case, and then afterwards you have to go up to somebody and you have to say, “thank you”. Oh my God, what a f*cking nightmare!
The moral? Keep trying, but STOP trying to do it yourself.
We all recognize that athletes have coaches. That’s where the idea of professional and life coaching comes from. But we are stuck with this archaic view that it’s okay for them, and not for us. They have special needs, and we don’t. Do you accept this view?
If not, find someone who you’d want to let help you. We spend our lives trying to convince other people that we have our acts together, but it’s an achievement to be able to say, “Here’s what I don’t have and here’s what I think is holding me back. Can you help?”
Whether it’s an assistant, a coach, a therapist, or a friend or loved one you never quite let in all the way, make it your hero’s mission to ask him or her for what you need. Often times, you don’t need more information to get things done; what you need is more application–an extra set of hands on the challenges of your career, practice, or personal life. And the motivation to get it all done is often most accessible when you’re working with a teammate, partner, or colleague.
Asking for what you need is courageous–and essential. Please, don’t end up like my dear old dad did. Choose to voice your needs to someone–anyone–who can help you accomplish your dreams.
In the meantime, keep REACHING…
STOP STOPPING!
I often talk with clients and in workshops about the “success formula” Napoleon Hill shares in his 1935 classic, Think and Grow Rich:
(1) Set a clear goal. What do you want to accomplish?
(2) Develop a detailed plan to reach that goal. Define exactly what actions you will need to take
(3) Take immediate (and, as Tony Robbins would say, “massive”) action on that plan, and
(4) Persist until you reach the goal
I use Edison’s invention of the light bulb as an example:
Edison’s clear goal was to create a lamp that operated safely and inexpensively using electricity as its power source, replacing gas and kerosene lamps in buildings and on streets.
His detailed plan was extraordinarily simple: test materials and combinations of materials until he found something that would not melt, burn or explode and would, instead , safely and inexpensively cast off light whenever and for however long someone wanted it.
His immediate action was to begin testing materials by running an electric current through them and he persisted in that action by continuing to test materials day in and day out for what turned out to be thirteen months (and not 6 weeks, as he had projected).
In his book, Straight Line Leadership, Dusan Djukich adds two important components to the formula: (1) deciding if you are willing to pay the price, and (2) monitoring your actions, making corrections as needed.
The price Djukich is referring to is the willingness to take the specific actions and to persist until you reach the goal. In other words, if it isn’t working, are you willing to keep at it, monitor it and make adjustments until you get it to work, or do you know at the outset that if you run into difficulties, you will stop.
With few exceptions, almost all of the failed projects and initiatives the CEOs and professionals I work with can point to failed for a simple reason: When the specific actions required became too difficult, they allowed the project to stop.
The remedy for this is simple: STOP STOPPING. Starting a project and stopping is not the result of a lack of conviction or desire, or of willpower or courage. It’s a habit—a choice.
If the history of your business is littered with projects and initiatives that didn’t pan out, it isn’t because they were not good projects. It’s the result of either a lack of willingness to pay the price, or the choice to stop when it became too difficult or too expensive.
If you’re taking action on an important goal and you’re 100% committed to it, choose a new habit…STOP STOPPING.
Oh…and keep REACHING...
Sandy
DRAW Them a REFERRAL DIAGRAM!
“I found a new way to talk with clients about referring me,” Ryan, a financial advisor, once told me excitedly on the phone. “I use a diagram! I’ll show it to you.”
Ryan emailed me a little while later with this:
Of course, I was interested, and I called him back right away to have him explain how it worked.
“First, I draw a circle in the center of a yellow pad, where you see the ‘Joe W’, representing the client,” he started.
“Then,” he continued, “I draw circles surrounding the first circle for people they’ve already referred to me. I thank them for the ones that worked out and tell them that these referrals are happy; I also point out the ones that didn’t work out, explaining how it just wasn’t right for whatever reason.”
“Finally,” Ryan exclaimed, “I ask them who’s missing from the chart! I say, ‘Who haven’t we talked about yet?’”
Ryan told me that the client at the center of this drawing, Joe, looked at the chart and said to him, “I wonder why we never talked about my niece, Barbara, and her husband.” He gestured to the open circles on the page. “Add Barbara in there.”
Ryan was very proud of his piece of “referral technology”—and so was I! I went on to suggest to him that any time a client or prospective client volunteers information, his next response should be a magical question—either “who else?” or “what else?” Once Joe volunteered Barbara, for instance, a “who else” could identify another person for Joe and Ryan to discuss, and with whom Ryan could go on to arrange an appointment. Asking “who else?” again might have brought to light a third—and then even a fourth—potential client for Ryan.
Most professionals are terrified of the referral conversation and they either avoid it entirely or approach it so awkwardly that it doesn’t end up working for them at all.
Tim, one of my current clients, told me earlier this week that he was uncomfortable “switching” from being a professional to asking for referrals. The goal, I told him, is to be a professional while asking for referrals. There shouldn’t be a difference. If you’re helping someone by providing a service, why not offer the same service to someone else in his or her life who might also really need your help?
If you have your own method of talking about introductions or referrals that works for you, please share it with me, and with the other professionals in your life! If referrals aren’t yet working for you, contact me now, and I’ll let you in on a few of the ideas that have worked for me and countless others in my network of clients and colleagues. No matter what strategy you implement, one technique is certain: ALWAYS be sure to keep REACHING…
Sandy
VIOLA DAVIS on “Imposter Syndrome”
Do you suffer from it, too?
Shortly after winning her Oscar this past Sunday, actress Viola Davis (who has also won Emmy and Tony awards) told ABC News that she sometimes feels like she has “Impostor Syndrome”.
“It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the Impostor, you know, Syndrome,” Davis said. “I still feel like I’m going to wake up and everybody’s going to see me for the hack I am.”
Several years ago, during a teleconference where motivational author Josh Hinds had interviewed me about my work around fear and limiting beliefs, listeners got to hear one attendee, Matt (not his real name), tell us that he was about to receive an acceptance of his offer to work with a big, new client.
“How do I deal with the feeling that I may have oversold them,” he asked, “—that I’m not really capable of delivering what I promised?”
“My wife calls what I’m going through ‘imposter syndrome’,” Matt continued, “but whatever you call it, it is really making me feel like a fraud, and as though that at some point, they’re going to figure it out.”
Imposter Syndrome describes that collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in the face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is the feeling that you are not really competent; that you are only posing as someone who is competent. It often hits professionals at the worst time—when they are negotiating an exceptionally large contract.
Josh and I both came to Matt’s aid. I pointed out that Matt should tell himself that it is okay to have this fear.
“Instead of trying to fight it,” I recommended, “acknowledge that it’s there—that it’s okay to be afraid—and take steps to do what you need to do to get rid of it. Be the expert you told them that you are.”
I explained to Matt that the first step anyone takes in order to become an expert at something is to declare that he or she is an expert. Then, he or she needs to “walk the talk”.
“Get whatever training, materials, and books you need to make what you told them true,” I advised him.
Josh and I both also pointed out that Matt needs to trust his clients’ gut opinion of him. “Believe that they have thoroughly considered your credentials and background,” we coached. “If they have more faith in you than you do,” we told him, “Then you need to borrow theirs.”
Like Viola Davis, many of us have a gap between what our abilities are and what we perceive that they are. While it sometimes works the other way, usually our abilities are greater than our perception of them. If you’re feeling the symptoms of Imposter Syndrome, more often than not, your inner critic is undervaluing you.
If the feedback you’re getting is overwhelmingly positive, trust in your clients’ perception of you! If you’re still afraid, acknowledge the fear, and contact me for help getting over it. Move into your best self in spite of the syndrome, and keep REACHING…
Clean Out Your Attic…Forgive Someone
Last year, I did not take my own advice, and I lost my temper with a vendor. I suggested that a price was too high and the vendor, Erica, went ballistic in her email response, saying, essentially, “How dare you question my price after working with me in the past?”
My response was less than kind, and it ended our relationship abruptly.
I know, I know. I would counsel my clients not to lose it, but I did. That ended our relationship…Until December. Two weeks before Christmas, Erica called me and apologized for her part in our little mishap. I accepted her apology and gave her my own.
That incident made my holiday a better one.
Erica’s call somehow reminded me of cleaning out an attic. It’s unpleasant, dusty work, but when it’s done, you feel as if you have more room to grow–more space to grow into.
Clean out your attic now. Start this New Year by forgiving some of the people who wronged you last year–not to make you a better person (although it might do that); not to bring you closer to heaven (although it might do that); not for the person who wronged you–but to get rid of the “stuff” you don’t need that may be keeping you from growing.
To be truly focused on what we want to accomplish, we need to let go of the junk in our attics–carrying around anger and hurt undoubtedly clutters our minds, working against us.
So, follow Erica’s example, not mine. Call someone to apologize for your part in a misunderstanding. Call someone who knows you’re angry or upset about something they did or said. Call someone who doesn’t even know why you stopped calling him or her, and tell them it’s okay.
Then, get back to pursuing your dreams.
In the meantime, keep REACHING…