REDUCE YOUR WORK, INCREASE YOUR INCOME

Join Liz Scomazzon as she interviews Margaret Gill on this fun and fast paced audio to find out how creating e-products based on your own expertise provides a steady stream of self-generating income that will take the pressure off your hands-on workload.

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Are You Missing Out on the Power of a Simple Newsletter or Ezine?

Have you ever seen that bumper sticker, “the person who dies with the most toys wins?”  Well, in marketing, s/he who dies with the biggest database wins! 

Building and maintaining your database is key to the success of your business and one of the best ways to build your business is by sending out a regular electronic newsletter (often called an Ezine – an electronic magazine).

The success of your newsletter strategy depends on the three golden rules of my Practice Building Success System.

The three golden rules are:

1. Give value

2. GIVE value!

3. GIVE VALUE!!!!!!!!

Your database is GOLD and if you treat it that way you will become GOLDEN!  Far too many therapists ignore this. 

The fact is, you are missing a HUGE opportunity if you don’t have a way to keep in contact with the people you meet and the clients who have already used your services.  In fact I’ve had several therapists double the revenue in their practice simply by staying in touch with people who already know and love them. 

It’s much easier to have an old client return than to procure a new one.

A newsletter or ezine is a great way to bring old clients back or just to keep reminding them you are there.  Even if they don’t need what you are offering right at that particular moment, at least you have reminded them you are still alive and kicking and ready to welcome them when they do need you.

If you consistently produce a quality newsletter or ezine, your subscriber database will grow steadily through word of mouth ..... when you provide value to your readers.  That last part of the sentence is bold because it is the key to the magic kingdom. 

I don’t know about you but the ezines that hit my inbox and get read are the ones that educate, inform and inspire and these are the very type of ezine I have forwarded onto others because I knew it would help those people.  While very few therapists can solely rely on the proliferation of their Ezine as their primary marketing vehicle, it is an effective way to allow other people to market for you while you sit back and watch the size of your database grow!

So by now I hope I’ve convinced you of the value of newsletters.  Now lets look at what you need to avoid:

The three quickest ways to die in cyberspace

1. Make it about you or your modality

2. Don’t make it about them

3. Don’t give value

My 90 Day Challenge is a very grand example of the “Give Value Golden Rule” in action.  I have had over 850 people sign up to do the challenge from a database of zero.  When I launched the 90 Day Challenge I had to re-sign my whole database onto my new shoppingcart.  You might expect my ezine list, created at the same time, is about the same size.  Well it’s not it’s double that and I can only put it down to the fact that people are saying such good things about me that people sign up for the newsletter despite not wanting to do the challenge.  When people sign on to the database the comment section usually goes something like “a friend who did your challenge told me about you”. 

By steadily plodding along giving value at every turn I got a name for myself that is now becoming unstoppable.  It doesn’t happen overnight but it happens!  The trick is to consistently turn out high content, high value newsletters that are designed to genuinely help people.  Your secondary need should be to publicise events and products that might also help others whilst still keeping your bank manager happy.

So why do newsletters work so well

There are three key reasons why they work:

1.  Credibility

Chances are, when people first subscribe to your Ezine they won’t know much about you or your profession.  Publishing a regular Ezine allows you to build credibility with your readers.  Natural therapies, like most professional services, require a level of trust.  An Ezine is an excellent way to build the necessary trust and credibility just by being yourself.

2.  Enables Relationship Building

Perhaps you’ve heard the term relationship marketing.  In essence, relationship marketing is the process of allowing people to get to know you and your services over time.  Having an Ezine is an excellent way to build relationships with potential clients.  Let’s face it, people are most comfortable (and willing) to hire a therapist whom they already know.  An Ezine is one of the most effective and efficient ways to build relationships with tens, hundreds and even thousands of people. 

3.  Increase Your Knowledge

When you write articles for your Ezine your own knowledge and confidence will increase.  As you know, the best way to learn something is to teach it!  So when you publish an Ezine and invest the time and energy to research topics and write about them, your own skills, proficiency and knowledge increase. 

Why are they so powerful?

It a numbers game.  In marketing a certain percentage of your database will react to your offers.  That reaction level is VERY low.  If you are getting anything between 1 and 3 percent reaction you would be happy. Anything over 10 percent and you will be ecstatic.  So if you aren’t into giving value you can see why a newsletter won’t work for you.  So let’s just look at the numbers for a minute.

If you send to 100 people and 1% react – that’s 1 person.  Lets say they have three treatments with you at $70 – it means that campaign grossed you $210

If you send to 1,000 people and 1% react – that’s 10 people and if those people have 3 treatments with you at $70 – well that campaign is worth $2,100!  Now are you are starting to see why newsletters work?

About now you are probably going into, “well it's all alright for HER, SHE knows thousands of people”.  Please know the absolute truth is that my first newsletter went to about TEN people – yes, you read right 10 family and friends.  Ask anyone with a big database they built themselves and they will tell you the same story.  Ali Brown, the Ezine Queen reaches millions of people now.  She inspired me to start by telling her list that she too started with 10 people and one of those was her cat!  

The hardest yards are in getting your first 500 people, then the flow becomes a little easier.  If you are a quitter, don’t start, it will break your spirit.  But if you are a plodder like me who kept writing from the heart, kept giving value and bless all of you who told your friends, family and colleagues about me.  But remember I also worked my little tush off in rain, hail, sunburn, sandstorms and tears to build my database and six years later I’m getting the rewards.

So if you are in this for the long haul and if you love what you do, your ezine will bring you a great deal of pleasure and profit over the years but the trick is to start NOW!

Start now and give yourself and become a winner in your prospects eyes!

Different Just Is Different

"Here we are, in a room full of strangers,
standing in the dark, where your eyes could not see me"

Nights on Broadway, The Bee Gees

When you are different it can often feel like you are standing in a Bee Gees song, standing in the dark surrounded by strangers.

Then all of a sudden the crowd parts and there stands that crazy awesome person that not only gets you, but you get them as well.

Recently a wonderfully creative friend was feeling perplexed over someone not being able to see the creative potential in a situation.

I mused that it wasn't that they didn't want to see it, in reality they just couldn't see it.

As soon as I heard the following quote, life became a lot easier for me.

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Some people just dance to a different tune and when you find someone with the same tune going on in their head ..... it's awesome!

To me it's like everyone on the planet wears different invisible glasses.  

These imaginary glasses have a different set of lenses that you can swap out whenever you feel like it.

Kind of like a pair of Smith's I purchased in Italy.  They had 3 different coloured lenses and you just popped out one lens if the weather conditions changed and replaced it with another.  My snow lens was pristine, but the other two got well swapped.  

You can see the latest Smith concept working in the 23 second video below.


Pivlock V2 Lens Change Video from smith optics on Vimeo.

 
WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT LENSES

So in my lens analogy, everyone has many different lens that they carry around with them, it's just that some people choose to wear the same lens day in and day out so they see the same things day in and day out.

Others have figured out that there is a never ending pit and they joyously swap out their lens at whim.

NOT EVERYONE SEES THE SAME STUFF

I also mentioned to my friend that I felt that these same people who are frustrating her are seeing things through their glasses and their lens, so they will inevitably be seeing things that she can't see.  

WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT


Everyone is unique and different, some folks just pour the whole packet of spices in their life curry, while others prefer to just let a few grains fall into their soup.  Neither is right or wrong ….. it's just different.

Being different isn't wrong, its just different.  

 

We Are What We Repeatedly Do!

I was asked for my opinion of what the following message means

OK - here's my best interruption at 7AM in the morning.


We Are What We Repeatedly Do ........ it's along the same lines as:

"‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.'
Jim Rohn"

But because likes attract, eventually the bigger number of people will outweigh the smaller number of people, unless we do something to change the odds and change the mix of people we hang out with.

This article that I found on google goes deeper into the "average of five people" topic - you can read it here

So, if we hang out with people who are constantly striving to be better, who are honest and true - then we will be that too because who we chose to spend our time with, influences who we are.  If we hang out with a bunch of crack addicts who don't respect themselves or others and steal from and abuse others to feed their habit, then, if we don't stop hanging with them, we will eventually become like that too.

If we want to be poor we should hang out with people who are poor and have a negative poverty mentality, then eventually we will become that too because there are immutable laws that say "likes attract and negativity will always pull you downwards".

If we want to be rich, hang out with people who already have money because their actions, thoughts and deeds will be different to the people who are poor.

Same with weight loss - if you want to lose weight - hang with people who are skinny because their actions are different to people who are fat.

So if we are what we repeatedly do in the above examples - if we repeatedly hang with the crack addicts because we grew up with them and went to school with them and feel some sort of guilt if we don't - then by repeatedly ignoring the warning bells and still hanging with them - then despite the good we hold within, eventually bad will "out average" the good and we will find ourselves in trouble with the law.  Then we end up in the criminal justice system surrounded by more crims and we spiral downwards.

If we repeatedly ignore health warnings, those actions will eventually see us ending up sick.

If we want something in life, but don't take the steps toward it, we will not get want we want.

So for instance an Olympic athlete repeatedly gets up each morning and does their training - if they do it enough and have the right mindset, eventually they will make the team.  If they repeatedly lie in bed or keep the thoughts they were bought up with that say "you will never amount to much", then they won't make the team.

Going up to the olympics we often see someone injure themselves just before they get on the plane to go.  If we went down the burrow, despite their best training schedules and despite their talent, they will often be repeating a family mantra that says "something always goes wrong" - or "I'm not really good enough for this team" and bam by "doing" that thought, they attract an injury that will make those thoughts come true or they will over train despite being told to rest and hurt themselves on their very last session.

The people who hit the winning tape are the ones who are the best at repeatedly doing ALL the things that are best for the outcome they desire.

Same with people who are sick - often they don't follow to the letter what their health professionals tell them and wonder why they don't get well - what they are doing becomes what they are.

How often do we see people told to rest and they think better of that advice and do the opposite and wonder why they end up back in hospital.

If we repeatedly do negative behaviours that don't support our dreams - we won't get our dreams

If we repeatedly do the positive things that support our dreams and set our goals and do ALL the behaviours and actions that will get us to those goals, then eventually we will get what we want.

However, this applies to everything including our thoughts, so if we let negativity into our thoughts then we become those negatives - hence why it is so important that our thoughts, actions and deeds are in alignment.

Have a read of Keith Richards bio "Life" and you will understand why they became the Rolling Stones - in the early days all they did was play their guitars and live the life of a rock star - they literally slept with their guitars.

Bands that make it tour constantly - they just "DO" so often that eventually become what they want to be.

While watching the INXS doco recently it was plain their success comes down to the number of gigs they did.  Most bands fail when they stop repeating the one thing that will make them successful - playing!

No one would go through the poverty and loss those guys did in the early days, but they just kept doing it way beyond anything anyone else ever would put themselves through.

I heard Bono tell Elvis Costello once:  "For anything to be really amazing, there has to be a long obedience in the same direction."  You can read about that interview here

What I think he was trying to say was that you have to obediently do the right things over and over again for many years to get something amazing.  He was talking about how The Edge had the luxury of not being in the limelight so much so was able to just play guitar all the time whereas he doesn't feel he is as talented as The Edge because Bono was pulled off track by the political "earth saving" stuff. 

Let me know what you think "We Are What We Repeatedly Do" means below.

Are You A Flower or A Bee?

There was a fabulous little story shared at a Brendon Burchard event I attended and I believe you are going to love it.

It totally nails how we need to not "bee" in our business and marketing activities.

Flowers are amazing things

Flowers start from a tiny seed, get an idea they can be bigger than their current reality, and begin to do what it takes to grow.

They start out as a very tiny seed, but eventually one day, once their foundations are secure, the roots have been put down, the conditions are right, the flower plant pops through its first offering to the world.  

It pops the new green shoots up through the dirt that has so lovingly supported it during its first stage of growth.  The flower then lets the green shoots turn into leaves that establish the stability of the plant and provide shade while the flower bud starts to form.

Then when it is good and ready, the flower bursts forth and shines in all it's glory for the world to see.  It is so wonderful and beautiful, people often ignore everything else in the garden just to get close to, and admire the flower.  There is quite a lot of work and energy required to get the flower to its full stage, but once there, it simply stands tall and naturally attracts everything it needs, until it is time to go back to the earth and start the process again.

Then there is the bee.  

Everyone loves bees, in fact they have a sold reputation for being busy.  

They pop out with much abundance surrounding them, more honey than they could ever eat in a lifetime, but alas, all to soon they join the thousands of others just like them who need to work hard all day and keep up the reputation of the bee.

They fly around all day seeking out the flowers who are just standing around in the sunshine waiting for them to arrive.  

Bees don't see so well so they have to fly until they find a big bright patch of color and hope its a bunch of flowers, not a bright red kenworth truck!  It's tough for a bee just to get back to the hive in one piece.

Poor Mz Bee ..... doesn't even have time to admire the flower before she busily has to be gathering the pollen and then carrying almost her own weight in pollen or nectar, back to the hive and fight with the thousands of other bees just to get a spot to dump her load.  

Meanwhile the flower is still quietly in the garden basking in the sunshine waiting for Mz Bee to return.  

But there is now more busy work to be done by Mz Bee before she can return, now she has to do a complete clean down before she goes back out to bring back another load.

Sometimes each flower patch is so abundant the bee needs to make several trips, back and forth, back in carrying a heavy load, taking an empty load out and carrying a heavy load back.  The noise and road rage is overwhelming all day, so many bees on the path back and forth to the hive.  Sometimes she passes by some amazing places, but there is no time to stop and smell the roses, just got to keep working.  Oh and let's not forget to pollinate a few thousand other plants as we pass by keeping the whole Eco system in balance.  The work of a bee is never done.

The bee is so busy she doesn't even have time to consider if there is anything productive she could be doing with the empty load she always takes out of the hive.  She is just so focused on getting the pollen and nectar back to the hive, no time for thinking creatively.  

Then there is that demanding Queen to be served ... Oh dear, more work, it never ends.

Then what?  The farmer comes and takes a huge percentage of the production, safe in the knowledge the bees don't need it, they will just keep asking more because they don't know how to stop.

The flower and the bee play an equal part in the honey making process, honey can't be made without a flower AND a bee.

In fact our whole food chain is being threatened because the bees don't have enough flowers to seek out because humans keep building hosing estates where flowers beds used to grow.   Honey and bees don't exist without flowers.

It's the same in business - you can be the bee who literally works their guts out to get the honey OR you can be the flower who stands in the limelight drawing the bees in and getting the same result.

In your business you can choose to be the one track bee who will always be one of the masses working their guts out with little reward or recognition, or you can be the business who plans, puts down sold foundations and roots, is prepared to enlist the help of others during its growth and most importantly it is prepared to shine so everyone can find you easily AND you can contribute equally to the positive outcome.

The moral of this story is: 

Stop cutting down the tall poppies because bees and humanity need them!

Flowers and bees choose different ways to get the same outcome which is honey.  Bees and flowers have predestined roles, humans have choice.

What are you choosing to be? A flower or a bee?    

Is your brand maturing?

Is your brand maturing?

What brand some of you might be thinking!  

But everyone's business has a brand even if you aren't aware of it.

I had a great example of the power of branding last week.  I needed to buy an external backup drive so I could run the Time Machine on my Mac ..... Yes I am still trying to figure out how I can ride in the time machine but for now I will keep using it to back up my data.  

I was in a strange city and I was looking for either an Officeworks store or JB HiFi - for those of you outside Australia they are big national chain stores who supply stationary and electronics like Office Depot and Radio Shack in the USA.  I had no idea where these stores were but I knew I would find one or both of them easily.

So I firstly drove down the main street looking for their bright blue or bright yellow signs.  Nothing on the main drag so I started to weave in and out of the smaller side streets.  Took about 5 minutes of random driving around before I found both on the same street within two blocks of each other.

Yes a good person would have looked them up on google maps on their mobile phone but shock horror - I don't use a mobile phone!  So I had to use old technology .... My instincts with a little help from branding.

These brands are so strong I could be guaranteed to find their store easily in an unknown regional city and locate it easily without a map or mobile device.  

A brand is a companies story.  In this instance their story says we are brightly colored, we stand out, we are in places that make it easy for you to find, we will have the cheapest prices and we will have lots of choice plus we stock all the brands you will want to buy.

Interestingly I purchased my 2 terabytes of data storage from the one who was $10 dearer, why?  Well because the more expensive one put a higher focus on customer service and clearly instilled the "go the extra mile with customer service" into their brand.  I was one block away from saving the extra $10 but I decided to pay extra because the knowledgeable young staff member was prepared to go in search of someone who was a Mac expert to answer my question.  I considered it a very cheap consulting fee because he told me how to reformat the product from pc to mac and gave me peace of mind I had bought the right product.  

When I come to think of it, I have always received this level of knowledge at JB's but they don't rank in my brain like say the Apple Store do because JB shops are a bit grungy.  They also don't aim to attract middle aged nerds, they aim to attract the youth market who like that grungy feel.  The grunge is part of their brand.

Have you thought about your brand?  Not even sure what a brand is.  Well simply put, your brand describes the personality of your business.   Think of it as a person and describe it.  

This week take a look at everything you read or purchase this week, then think what is the personality here.  Strong brands do it for you for instance Apple ran a great advertising campaign a few years with a picture of a hip young guy standing beside a classic corporate accountant and asked the question, which one would you rather be.  There is no right or wrong answer to the question, they were simply attempting to attract more of their people to buy their product and keep the people they didn't want in their stores away.

But hey wait a minute you might say, don't they want everyone in their store? NO - they only want those hip good groovy people who are easy to sell to.  There in lies the power of a brand.  If your brand is clear you will only attract the people who want to buy from you.

Do you even know who your people are?  If you don't know your people you can't begin to know your brand, therefore your people can't find you.

Branding is a whole new interesting world that the big guns play hard in, but even if you don't have big budgets, your brand can still support your business.

Your brand is a living, breathing identity that grows and matures and ages just like a human does.  We learned in some high end training I did in New York that brands mature.  A sign of a brand coming of age or maturing is when it gets a major revamp.  Facebook and You Tube are great examples of a maturing brand who have recently completely changed the look and feel of their business and the way their customers interact with it.  Now it's hard to even remember life before the timeline version of Facebook.

In layman's terms, they are fixing their mistakes.  So often in business we launch in and learn a lot as we grow.   We make mistakes and self correct and make even more mistakes, then we might go learn from an expert and figure out where we went wrong and fix it.  Then there comes a point at which you have something so jumbled up and unclear that you have to regroup and relaunch the brand.  It throws your customers for a loop when you do it.  But sometimes that is a necessary part of your business growth.  

I am going through a big personal and brand regroup right now as I go off into the wild blue yonder and regroup and rebrand.  My training in New York taught me that I have many of the right puzzle pieces, they are just in the wrong place.  It's not that I even have to do much to put it right, it's simply about sitting down and rethinking where I am going and who I want to work with and how I want to get my message out and then what do I really want to say.

If you aren't doing this on a regular basis you risk your brand stagnating.  You might have guessed your brand is a sooky la-la that always seeks and needs constant attention!

So while I go quiet for a while and pack up my house into a 3x3 lock up garage and hit the world with a lap top and backpack - why don't you spend some time thinking about how you can either create your brand or re-invent your brand.

Funny end to my story.  When I presented my 2 terabyte Seagate external hard drive to Oli my Mac Tech he was very impressed but pointed out I could have given him a hoy and he could have got me one online and bought it cheaper and had it delivered to my door!  Hence why any serious retailer is clambering to include online stores in their branding mix right now.

Where Am I Going To Go?

This is the big question everyone is asking me at present since my shock announcement that my Cute House is sold.

The three word answer:  I don't know 

But that's the point, I don't know and I don't want to know!  I am throwing myself on the mercy of the Universe and building a new story.  I believe I will still be doing the same work, teaching, coaching, mentoring, speaking.  I will just have no fixed abode.

I am truly stepping out to further my dream which has always had a component that says I teach and work in many different and exotic places all round the world.  One of those exotic places can be your computer, I can beam into your inbox and Skype address easier than I can drive to your house.  We are entering a new way of living and working and as usual ...... I'm on the cutting edge of change!

I can tell you the house settles on the 13th July and I move 10 minutes up the road and house sit for a friend in Daylesford for two weeks, then I will probably be in Silicon Valley for more training, but I don't have anywhere to stay there yet.  Then I don't know anymore.  In fact my car has more stability than me, she is going to live in the blue mountains, north of Sydney for a few months = NOICE!

So if you have friends or family anywhere in the world with WiFi who need a house sitter or pet minder, the give me a hoy.

Despite all I have been through, this is my greatest test of trust yet.  

So please support me.  If you have been thinking of doing some one on one coaching or if you see a course you fancy doing online, please don't hesitate or think about it - just do it - it could be difference between me eating that day or not.  

Thank you to those who have supported the dream thus far by doing my courses and being clients, without you the dream would have died, instead it's hitting the next phase and I am very grateful to you all.

I Want To Be A Crazy One When I Grow Up!

I love the Apple ad campaign that says “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world .... are the ones who do".  

I encountered one of those crazy people when I first started out as a coach.  His name was Thomas Leonard and he was the founder of this amazing place called Coachville.

It was the 10 year anniversary of his death this week and Coachville asked the members of the Graduate School to remember Thomas in a Top Ten.

Top Tens Were Legendary!

Every day we got a top ten in our inbox.  Back then we thought this was mind blowing technology.

Each day the latest thinking from the Coachville Community was beamed into our inbox and each day we were inspired to greatness by Thomas or one of his merry band of followers. I even had some top tens published.

Words can’t go anywhere near explaining how excited and validated I felt when for the first time I opened the top ten of the day and found it was mine.

Thomas taught us stuff that is probably even more valuable today than it was when we learned it.

We would sit on crackly teleclass lines for hours listening to his wisdom rolling in.  Frequently too scared to ask questions in case we got the “stupid” silence - Thomas didn’t do so well with stupid and let you know!  For us downunder it was frequently the middle of the night.

Most of the time we had to dial in a couple of times during the call because the bridgeline technology was pretty shaky in those days.  Frequently we’d end up on calls that had been double booked.  It really was the wild west.

The technology now is so much more stable and everything is so much easier, but the simplicity of getting your message to world is still made possible by the humble teleclass.

As I sit here ten years on and think about Thomas I know he had to leave us.  He had done so much to change the world in a very short space of time.  He invented coaching and now its fairly mainstream.

If he had stayed, sure we would have kept listening in and being inspired, but for me his death signalled the time for me to get really serious.  To honour him fully was to stay in the game and keep going.  I did!

I’m so pleased I was around in those heady days.  My big regret is that I didn’t go to see him in Sydney when he came downunder.  I let sensible take over and didn’t load the credit card.  I reasoned I could see him another time.  Part of me knows that happened for a reason.  He was a unique character and didn’t suffer fools gladly.  I know he upset a few people who did go, and I’ve heard some horror stories from people who worked with him.  This way the legend lives on unscathed.

The crazy ones aren’t easy to be around.  They set standards well above the norm.  They get frustrated when you can’t keep up with their thoughts that run at a thousand miles an hour.

I’ve come to understand they are connected to their higher selves in a much stronger way than “normal” human beings.  As I read the biographies of other crazies, there is a constant that runs with them all.  They have been through more than most and they carry a passion that will withstand anything that is thrown at it.

So many describe the creativity that flows from them, as God given, or almost like they can’t stop it.  Thomas was like that - he couldn’t stop the need to help people connect with the power of coaching.

Love ya T - here’s to the next crazy 10 years.

This is the Top Ten I wrote for the Coachville celebrations:

The Top 10 things I learned from Thomas Leonard

1. Never settle today for what was ok yesterday
2. Say it like it is and then add value
3. Don’t tolerate what’s holding you back
4. The shift key, full stops and commas are a waste of time
5. Keep your keys in a bowl and your towel on a hook
6. If you can’t do it, start doing it anyway
7. When in doubt, create a top 10
8. Don’t wait until its perfect, get it out anyway
9. If you wait until the bureaucrats are ready, the time has passed
10. Being #1 is the best and only place to be