QUOTE: “The more you say to yourself, ‘I am responsible,’ the stronger, better and finer a person you become. And every part of your life will improve at the same time.” – Brian Tracy

One of the themes running through my life currently, and in the lives of my clients, is that of Personal Responsibility. If you’ve been to my workshop and on any of my calls, you know that I believe strongly in Personal Responsibility (I often call it ‘The No Excuses Approach’) and how I do not believe you can ever achieve BIG success without it. It’s a topic that few marketers ever really talk about in depth, but one that is crucial for success.

You see, each time I bump up against a new level of success in my business, a lot of my old “stuff” comes back up. I’ve caught myself in the past comparing my success to others with more success, feeling resentful, feeling less-than, and sometimes even BLAMING others or my own particular situation or for not being where I would LIKE to be in terms of success in that moment. And believe me, it doesn’t feel good. But perhaps you know exactly what I’m talking about… (more…)

In sifting through emails from a recent R&D survey I launched, I read the responses, and honestly, I wanted to cry. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I haven’t been aware that most solopreneurs have very low expectations of what could be made in self-employment (I’ve been at this for almost 9 years after all!), but I just didn’t know how LOW. Until I got the responses to the following question: “What is the most amount of money you see yourself making as a self-employed person?” Not just this year, but EVER.

Close to 200 solopreneurs (mostly female) wrote in and shared with me their “Most-I’ll-ever-make-in-a-year” numbers. What shocked me was that the number itself was really LOW and the majority of people wrote in numbers within a short range: between $50,000 and $75,000. Sure, a couple of them wrote in $150,000, but even THAT seemed like a far cry from what I *know* is possible, when you shift the way you work, get good marketing in place, create systems for everything, outsource, and set up leveraged and passive streams of income.

But what really got me choked up was they didn’t BELIEVE it was possible and worse, some didn’t feel they deserved it. Their MINDSET wasn’t accustomed to thinking BIG, and truthfully that made me very sad, almost depressed. So I went about adding it to my Client Attraction coaching curriculum. (more…)

Imagine you’ve worked hard to market your services; you’ve attracted a prospective client, set up a “sales conversation” and gone through the whole sales process. Great job, but sometimes, no matter how hard we try, prospects don’t always sign up on the spot.

Sometimes, a prospect needs some time to make the decision on whether or when they’d like to start working with you. What I’ve noticed over the years is that when this happens, most always, the sale never happens, probably because life gets in the way and what’s out of sight is out of mind.

Often, this means you’ve lost them for good. UNLESS you use some kind of method to get indecisive prospects to slide right into your practice, instead of slipping through your fingers. So I’ve come up with a fantastic remedy for this, which helps me and my students close the deal 97-98% of the time. If prospects don’t bite on the ‘sales’ call, use what I call the “bookend” method. Here’s how it works. (more…)