After just coming back from our big 3-day live event and also having recently returned from an event where I was an attendee, I thought it might be helpful to cover the topic of How to Get the Most out of a Live Event. Now, these strategies aren’t rocket science but sometimes a solid reminder is all we need to make a good event a great one!
1. Attend all sessions. You made the investment of time, travel, and resources to go to the event, so make being in the room at all times an absolute priority. Don’t skip sessions. Reschedule client calls. Be present at all times, open to the material and learning everything being presented to you. I recommend turning off your cell phone (no texts) and not surfing the web on your laptop. Get rid of all those distractions. This is your learning time, honor it with your full attention.
Make sure to always keep learning and attending events. That’s how you grow. (Click here to tweet this.)
2. Make amazing connections. Attending a live event gives you the opportunity to meet other attendees, sometimes from all over the world. Take advantage of meeting new people by networking and creating strategic alliances. Now is not the time to be shy and introverted. Introduce yourself during breaks and schedule lunch dates with other attendees. (Don’t forget your business cards!) Remember, the person sitting next to you at lunch may just be the one who has the answer or the resource you need. That’s how the Universe works!
Watch this week’s video strategy for all 6 of my strategies to ensure you take time off every year. It’s critical for your success.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
What events have you wanted to attend to further your business growth and personal growth. Find out when they’re happening and invest in yourself by registering. Then, use today’s strategies for getting the most of the event and you’ll start really getting a return on your investment.
This is just one of the many best practices we dive deep into with the students of The Client Attraction Business School, the premier training school for growth-minded entrepreneurs looking to quickly attract more clients and make more money. If you’re interested in finding out more, visit www.ClientAttractionBusinessSchool.com for more details. To speak to an enrollment coach, click here.
Today I want to talk to you about taking time off, for the sake of your business.
When I first started ClientAttraction.com, I planned out my schedule the way I wanted to live my life. I made it a point to set up my business so that I’d take a full day off per week, a week off per month and at least one month off per year—approximately 18 weeks of vacation per year. (Everybody needs down time to succeed.)
And for a while, that was my life and it was wonderful. I was incredibly productive when I was working and the rejuvenating time off gave me more creativity, until I got busier and busier and started multiplying my business. That’s when I hired full-time employees who counted on me to be there and to drive this train. So I stopped taking as much time off, feeling like I had a job again and I became resentful about it. But not anymore.
Every entrepreneur needs time off in their business to experience success. (Click here to tweet this.)
Let’s be honest. When it’s your business, it’s hard to shut off, right? There is no such thing as a completed to-do list and entrepreneurs often blur the lines between business and personal time. But if you want to be client attractive and you want to multiply your income, whether you’ve been in business for many years or are just ramping up, you must have down time.
Watch this week’s video for my 5 strategies to ensure you take time off every year. It’s critical for your success.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Take the time now to commit to your time off over the next twelve months. Map it out for yourself and enter it onto your calendar. Follow my five strategies to set yourself up for success. Then, give yourself this precious gift of time and watch your business—and your life—flourish.
This is just one of the many best practices we dive deep into with the students of The Client Attraction Business School, the premier training school for growth-minded entrepreneurs looking to quickly attract more clients and make more money. If you’re interested in finding out more, visit www.ClientAttractionBusinessSchool.com for more details. To speak to an enrollment coach, click here.
As entrepreneurs, we move quickly in business. We make decisions more quickly than most. We are spontaneous and we have the technology at our fingertips to assist us even further.
But there are times in life and business, when we need to take a step back, slow down and think it through more carefully than usual, especially during those rare times of national, even global crisis. For us as a company, that has happened twice in late 2012 with two tragedies that hit very close to home here in Connecticut, where ClientAttraction.com is headquartered.
Six new guidelines to doing business with dignity, integrity and respect during times of tragedy. (Click here to tweet this.)
Both times—first during Hurricane Sandy (one of the most severe storms to ever hit the East Coast) then again during the Newtown school shootings, our nation experienced deep heartbreak as we watched our neighbors endure severe loss. And both times over that short span of two months, we as a small company with clients to serve, employees to support and year-end goals to meet, were in the middle of a major business launch.
Did we do everything right as a company in response to the tragedies? No. But we’re learning and applying what we’ve learned to our Best Practices so that as a company we can continue to get better at what we do, continue to improve our service to our customers and clients, and to always, always put people first.
Watch this week’s important video for my six new guidelines to doing business with dignity, integrity and respect during times of tragedy.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Take some time to evaluate how you do business during times of crisis—what worked and what didn’t in the past? Use my six guidelines to help you prepare your own checklist. My advice is to do this in advance…before you ever need it. My team and I would like to extend our sympathies to the city of Boston and to all those who were affected by this recent tragedy. I hope these strategies will help you do business with more authenticity, integrity and love.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, when it comes to knowing how to market your business online using the web and the Internet, social media and networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are receiving lots of attention as tools for Client Attraction.
And if you’ve used any of these tools, you can see how it’s easy to spend a lot of (wasted) time there. To attract ideal high paying clients from social media and also build your list of email subscribers, it’s important to remember that that the same rules apply for social media as they do for traditional marketing: give value and build relationships!
“To attract ideal clients using social media, give value and build relationships.” (Click here to tweet this.)
As you know, here at Client Attraction we teach our clients and students that authentic and compelling marketing is all about PULLING prospects to you. With the use of a compelling marketing message and by offering high-content information that adds value, your audience is motivated to take further action, either by wanting to join your email list or even better – wanting to work with you.
And the same applies with social media marketing. So, when using social media, you want to be crystal clear on how you plan to effectively and strategically use these marketing tools and still remain “Client Attractive.”
Watch this week’s video for three great strategies when it comes to using social media to attract clients.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Apply the steps from today’s video with a focus on creating meaningful connections and establishing long-term value. As you do, you’ll cultivate the right relationships and as a result, prospects see you as Client Attractive. Focus on that and you’ll never be without clients, ever again.
People I meet at events around the country always ask me what it takes to create uncommon results in one’s business. I’m talking about the kind of results that astounds everybody around you and makes them say, “Huh? How’d she do that?”
When I share with them what to do, they sometimes think it sounds too simple. I think it’s because most people are waiting for a ninja strategy (and yes, there are plenty and I share the ninja stuff with our students and clients) but it also comes down to doing things in accordance with two laws of success, and they actually go hand in hand.
“There are two lifelong success strategies that all highly successful people adopt.” (Click here to tweet this.)
That being said, many people don’t give these two lifelong success strategies much thought because they’ve heard them before. They say, yeah, I know that already. And you’ve probably said that too. But do you? You see, I don’t believe you know something until you do it on a daily basis, until it becomes second nature to you. And in business, if you don’t do it daily, then you don’t know it, you’ve only HEARD of it! If you’re not getting results from it day in and day out, then you don’t really know it. Action is key and implementation is crucial, even with the simple stuff.
Watch this week’s strategy for the two lifelong success strategies that ALL highly successful people adopt.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIjekrQSnrU[/youtube]
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Identify the specific excuses and fears that hold you back from taking decisive action on the opportunities that are right in front of you. How are they stopping you and what are you going to do about it?
I just recently posted a quote about fear on my Facebook page, that got a big response. The quote goes like this, “The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” We all have fears that stop us in business—fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of humiliation, fear of criticism, fear of the unknown—you get the idea.
The list can go on for miles. As you probably know, I’ve worked with thousands of entrepreneurs and I witness how they stop themselves by allowing fear and self-doubt to keep them ‘playing small’ in their business and their lives. The thing is, they’re often not even aware of it. Here’s what I mean… People SAY they want something very badly, that they want a change, and theoretically, that they’d do anything to get it.
“Entrepreneurs often allow fear and self-doubt to keep them ‘playing small’ in their business and lives.” (Click here to tweet this.)
But when the rubber meets the road, it’s a totally different story. For many, when it’s time to take action, they’re just not willing to take the steps or do the work that creates the result. It’s that inner self-doubt and all the fear that consistently has them questioning every single move they make in growing their business and their income.
Watch this week’s strategy for the two steps you must take to break through that fear once and for all.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Ask yourself the following questions. Are you willing to trade short-term discomfort for long-term success? If so, are you willing to go where you have to go? Are you willing to talk to whomever you have to talk to? Are you willing to do what you haven’t done? Are you willing to stretch beyond your comfort zone?
If so, I’ve got great news for you—that is when the clients, the money and all the opportunities show up.
If you loved this concept and want to dive even deeper, click here to join me for a LIVE Video Presentation (it’s totally free) where I will be teaching you my proven process to master your Inner Game.
You may know that I teach hundreds of our clients and customers each year how to use video to get clients and build their list. One of the questions I get most often is, Derek, why is video such an important part of your marketing and do I really need it? My answer is invariably Yes! You really do need it. You see, video is an essential part of your online marketing strategy, specifically having a video on your website, because it helps you authentically connect with people who visit your website and allows you to engage with them in a very compelling manner. Depending on what you ask them to do in your video, they happily opt-in to join your list or call you to become a client (or both).
“Video helps you authentically connect and engage with prospects in a very compelling manner, turning them into clients quickly” (Click here to tweet this.)
Now, I know what you’re probably saying… But Derek, I don’t even know where to start with video… all the different equipment and technology that exists, I’m confused. Do I even have what it takes to create good videos? Is that you? Are you feeling stuck when it comes to doing video? Well, with everything that’s available at our fingertips with video technology and the world of online virtual assistance, there is really no reason you cannot use video on your website.
Why is video so important for list building? Video allows you to interact with your prospects better than anything else – except for face-to-face interaction, of course. And unless you can figure out some magic way to appear in person every time someone visits your website – you’ll want to use video, in a strategic way. There are three important elements of shooting a video that I want to share with you, specifically.
Watch this week’s strategy to help you get up and running with video for marketing your business in no time.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq-Q3CsHisU[/youtube]
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Ask yourself: how am I using video in my marketing? If you don’t have a video on your website that will help you when it comes to connecting with your website visitors and building your list, I strongly suggest you consider adding video to your marketing efforts as soon as possible.
We’ve been using video now here at ClientAttraction.com for a few years now on our website. It has been a game-changer not only for helping us build our list, but also attracting more ideal clients in droves and adding a lot to our bottom line. It’s time you do the same…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqVFFflgjVk[/youtube]
In today’s video strategy we’re talking about building your list with article marketing. Article marketing is actually one of hundreds of marketing strategies for driving traffic to your website so that you can build your list. It’s a strategy that really works and yet it’s not something that a lot of entrepreneurs are talking about or know about.
Article marketing is quite simple. It’s the process by which you take your content, preferably pre-existing content from your blog or from your website, and you submit it to article directories on the web. Article directories are basically websites where you post your content so people can find you on the Internet. Pretty simple. (Click here to tweet this.)
When someone does a search for a particular phrase on Google, for example, your website may not come up right away, but your article will if it refers to what they searched for. This is a great way to attract new people to you who would be interested in your content and ultimately what you have to offer.
Once you submit your content, you can categorize it based on the topic, keywords and the message you’re looking to share. You can even do things like set up an author profile with a bio, picture and links back to your website.
When you submit your content to several article directories, I recommend you do it on a consistent basis and not as a one-time-only thing. This will increase your exposure and ultimately your visibility in a huge way. It’s a great way to grow your platform and drive more targeted traffic back to your website to get a free gift from you, preferably what we at ClientAttraction.com call your Irresistible Free Offer, and then they can be added to your email subscriber list.
Your IFO can be a free report, a free checklist, a free video, a free audio or a free CD. You have to give them something. When they sign up for your free offer they also get subscribed to your email list so that you can continue to give them great content and stay in touch with them. This is where the power of article marketing goes on overdrive – by driving traffic back to your site and at the same time converting those leads onto your list using your website.
The potential reach from article marketing is massive when you think about the number of new people who are out there searching for your content. They just don’t know about you or your website yet. It’s all about getting that out there.
The best part is you don’t have to go out and create more content to get this type of exposure and traffic. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We actually recommend that you use content that you’ve already created. Perhaps it’s an article that you’ve written in the past or a section of a book that you’ve written or any number of other pre-written content. That’s what we call recycling in the world of client attraction. It creates less work for you.
You’re basically leveraging content you’ve already created and using it to build your list. It’s a fantastic strategy. Now remember, just posting an article or a video to your blog or your website only works for nurturing the people that are already on your list. Article marketing is all about leveraging that same content on the web to attract new people to build your list even further.
Here’s the best part. It’s low-cost or really sometimes even no-cost to implement. It takes very little time to do and it’s very little effort. It’s super, super easy. Anybody can do it and get started literally right away.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
What is your article marketing strategy? How are you, right now, taking your pre-existing content and actually getting it out to the web for increased visibility and bigger awareness to attract more visitors to your site? What are you doing right now for article marketing?
The best place to start is just to do some research. Find a few article directories that are out there that you think would work the best for your market and start submitting your content beginning this week. Yes, I said, “This week.” There’s no rest for the weary here at Client Attraction. It’s about taking action and doing whatever it takes.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD8kURuIpKg[/youtube]
One of the biggest things that affects your business and your income is your level of self-confidence. You’d think it would be marketing and yes, marketing is massively important, but if you don’t have confidence in your abilities, if you don’t have confidence in your business or in what you’re doing you’re not going to get anywhere in your business.
Why is that? It’s because confidence affects your actions and your actions create your habits and your habits, which are the things that you do day in and day out, create your results in business. Confidence is responsible for how many clients you have, how much you make, etc. All of that is based on your actions. That’s why confidence affects every single aspect of your business. (Click here to tweet this.)
Confidence affects how you close the sale and how often you market. It affects your willingness to do whatever it takes, how you follow up with prospects, how you reach out to potential strategic alliances, how you network, how you speak, all of which determine your number of clients and how much you make in your business. All of this confidence, affects the money that you make in your business.
It’s easy for your confidence to take a hit. I know you know this because you’re maybe experiencing it right now. Each time you don’t close the sale, there’s a little piece of your confidence that gets taken away. When you make a mistake in your business (we all do) who is the harshest critic? You know right? It’s you. I know because I’ve been here too.
Every time you lose a client or you don’t make a deadline or you don’t fill that program it makes you question whether you’re really cut out to do this – being an entrepreneur. It all stems from your level of confidence. If confidence is such an important part of the success of your business, it’s really important that you guard it. Guard your confidence.
Allow me to share two simple things with you that I did, especially in the beginning when things were tough, that allowed me to keep my confidence at a natural level. It kept me persistent. This is not about inflating your confidence to an abnormal level. It’s about bringing your confidence back to a natural level.
1. Read your testimonials on a daily basis. I know it sounds kind of silly, but one of the best ways to get back to a natural level of confidence is to feed your mind with positive validation that you are good at what you do. That inner gremlin, that drunk monkey inside, it’s so quick to tear you down and to make you feel bad and to make you question whether you can actually succeed in your business. Any time something bad happens, that inner gremlin is right there to tear you down.
To counteract that you must counteract it with equal force. All you need to do is read your testimonials or think about all of the positive things that you’ve done for clients or people in your life especially around you business, all the people that you’ve helped along the way. A lot of people look at their life or their business like 98% is going badly and only 2% is going well, but that’s not usually the case.
Usually only 2% is going badly and 98% is going well because you’re making progress and you’re putting one foot in front of the other. Remember, building your business is not a race. It’s pace, not race. The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. There is some time in between and that time sometimes makes us question, “Am I good at this?” Instead of focusing on that, focus on what is going well. Focus on what your clients have gotten from you and you’ll have the confidence to keep going.
2. Keep a ‘kind words’ folder. You can do this on the desktop of your computer where you move over some emails from clients who are getting great results or you paste some of the screenshots of a note from a gushing client who left you a note on your facebook wall. You can even create a physical basket and put it on your desk, where you put cards that you’ve received, little notes of encouragement, words from client who said that you’ve changed their lives.
That’s what I do. My team calls it the Good News Basket. I call it my Kind Words Basket. It contains otes from my clients about how I’ve changed their lives, stories along the way, notes that my team prints up for me from emails that have been sent. It’s a big pile of love.
The reason I keep this is because just like anybody else in business, there are going to be days where the going gets tough. And it always will because at each new level there’s a new devil, but you can just feed the positive part of your soul so that you regain you confidence and you keep going.
Remember, you started your business to make a difference in people’s lives for the highest good of all. By feeding your soul with positive validation, it allows you to ignore that drunk monkey and to stay in faith, that you are here to change the quality of peoples’ lives through your business and when you do you’re going to persevere. It’s those people who stay the course and persevere that ultimately win in business. You can do this.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Stay in positive affirmation. Read your testimonials and keep those little notes and read them when the going gets tough. You’ll see a big difference in your self-confidence in no time. Good luck!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9fwLX1KY9A[/youtube]
Usually at ClientAttraction.com we talk to you about attracting and signing on new clients. That’s what everyone wants right–new, ideal, high-paying clients, continually filling your pipeline. For the bulk of my career that’s what I focused on too. After awhile I realized that I was spending a huge amount of time and effort attracting brand new clients, but my current clients were leaving after their initial term was over.
I didn’t understand what was going on because they were getting great results. We were transforming their businesses. They were going from making not much to making six figures and beyond. I didn’t see why at the time the majority of them weren’t signing up for another year. (Click here to tweet this.)
Here’s what I knew. I knew deep in my heart that I could help them further multiply what they had already created with me. I knew that I could take them to the next level, but somehow they didn’t see that and they ended up moving on to another mentor. If I’m being transparent with you this actually kind of affected my ego and my self-esteem. It was like, “Ouch. You’re moving on to someone else. Why?”
Have you ever thought about what it takes to retain clients past their initial term? In the last several years I have actually shifted the way that I do business. Miraculously we have witnessed clients staying with us for much, much longer—signing up again year after year even at our highest programs levels.
You may be thinking, “Why are they signing up again? Didn’t they get everything they needed the first time around?” Well, yes they did get everything they needed, but now they feel great about signing on for year two, year three and so on. Today, I’d like to take you behind the scenes in our business and share with you just a few of the many, many things that you can shift within your own business so that your clients happily stay with you longer and continue to get great results with you, while recommending you to others.
Today, I will share with you three simple things that we do in our business that perhaps you would like to apply to your own business.
1. Give more than clients expect to get. You may not know this about me yet, but in my work with clients I love to give huge value. I believe in under promising and over delivering when it comes to value.
That means that our clients are surprised to see how much more they get than what they paid us. For example, people traditionally come to us for marketing and for client attraction and we deliver that like nobody else does because we’re experts at it, but what they don’t realize is that we also give them all the mindset work and all the spiritual marketing principles that really work to get clients. We give them list-building, internet marketing strategies, systems, all of that for free, which helps them create even more results. They’re very surprised to get all of this extra stuff.
2. Continually innovate. For many years I had only a couple of programs. Once a client consumed those programs and got results there was nothing new for them to learn and this is why they would move on. In looking back now, I don’t blame them. There was nothing new to consume. Well, the solution was to create new stuff.
Derek and I are always learning, always improving our own businesses and getting best practices from other sources. Now as we continually sharpen the saw, we have our own mentors. We take all of these new things that we’ve learned and when they’ve worked for us, when we’ve digested them and we see that they create results, we distill everything that has worked for us and then we pass it on to our clients so they can use it. This makes it easy for our clients to get best practices without having to invest lots of time and lots of energy and lots of money elsewhere to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
They tell us that this is one of the big reasons why they come back again and again and again. It’s because we’re constantly innovating.
3. Make your clients feel significant. I’ve realized something about the human race. It’s that every single person on Earth loves to feel like they are significant. They want to matter in the eyes of others. We all want to feel loved and when you can make your clients feel special they like being around you and they don’t want to unplug from that.
Many people I know keep their clients at arm’s length. We do the opposite. We love them. We surround them with people who love them and champion them and they feel, for the first time in their life perhaps, that they have a tribe of people who unconditionally accept them. We surprise them with little gifts that they didn’t expect or anticipate. They experience little touches here and there. It’s the way that Derek and I and the team are anyway, but we’ve decided to extend that into our business. For many of our clients they don’t get that anywhere else.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Ask yourself these three questions because this is about you.
What can you do to over deliver and give your clients more than they originally expected?
How could you continually innovate in your programs and offerings?
How will you start making your clients feel more significant?
When you do these three things you’re going to see a huge shift in your level of client retention and the years that people stay with you happily and in your referrals. Best of all, it feels amazing.
