I was watching a video this week, promoting CrossFit (CrossFit is strength & conditioning fitness) and thought I would take our question of the week from this.

What is your fear, when it comes to your business?  Does fear stop you from achieving your goals? 

Would love to know what you think......Please take a moment to share your thoughts. Tweet

Yesterday I was skimming through the news headlines on the home page of Ninemsn, when I came across a heading that looked familiar. The heading was “Four steps to regaining self-belief”. The reason that it was familiar was because it was the title of the article I had written for Flying Solo, which has been released last Friday (2nd Sept) on the Flying Solo website.

My curiosity was piqued, and I clicked onto the heading to take a look and see what this article was about. Well, you can imagine my surprise, when I began reading the article and realised that it was in fact my article from Flying Solo. Who would have known that Ninemsn would pick up my article in Flying Solo?

Who is Ninemsn? Well, I’ve taken this directly from their site: “Ninemsn is Australia’s largest online content publisher with 10.3 million people (March ’10) visiting the site each month – reaching 69 per cent of the online population.” To reach a possible 10.3 million people, all it cost me was my time, and knowledge and I want to let you know that it is something that you can do as well.

I encourage most of my mentoring clients to write articles, as it is a great way to establish credibility with clients and prospective clients. To get started, why not use some of the following ideas.

1. Look at some of the issues and challenges your clients are facing at the moment. Write an article discussing these challenges and ways that you would solve them. Put together a tip sheet, a top ten list, or you could us this information to write an article of interest around these challenges. Aim to have the word count in your article at a minimum of 300 words and I would say no longer than 1200 words.

2. Once written, use my ‘rule of three’. By this I mean, post your article in a minimum of three places. One would be your newsletter, a second place could be your blog, and then after that you could try article directories, industry magazines (both online and hard copy), ask your joint venture partners if they would like to use it, and forums to name a few.

There are a number of free article directories out there that you can use to place your articles, a couple that I use are: Ezinearticles; Articlesbase and Selfgrowth.

Research industry magazines, and find the email address of the editor. Write to the editor, letting them know that you have attached an article for their consideration. If it's an editor that I haven’t been in contact with before, I will let them know the current word count, and if this was an article of interest, that I would be happy to increase the word count if they required. Editors that I currently have a relationship with, I will forward them my current articles, tell them that if they would like to use these articles, then I will increase the content to reach their required word count. I find that different magazines have different word count requirements.

3. Track your articles. You can do this by using google alerts to see where your articles are being place. If you place your articles on your blog, make sure that readers are able to forward your articles on as well to all the social media outlets. On my blog site, I use a service called ‘addthis’ and each week I receive an update of what articles have been forwarded, to where, and if there has been any click backs. If an article is being published in one of the magazines I currently write for, I have a specific landing page dedicated to each magazine, so that I can track how many people have gone from reading my article to checking out my website.

There are a number of added benefits of article writing; one is that it is free publicity, especially if your article is picked up for a newspaper article. Media mentions do position you as an expert in your industry and one of the things that I have learnt from my colleagues in PR, is that television/radio producers will scourer the print papers for stories. It also adds weight to your website when you include your media profile, and you could get paid for writing and this does happen – read the next paragraph!

Last year I was working with a mentoring client, who works within the health and wellness industry, her focus with clients is helping them to understand the missing link between mindset, your thoughts and weight loss. In one of our calls, I mentioned to her that I thought it was time for her to begin writing articles and submitting them to various industry magazines. This suggestion was meant with a very firm “No, this is something that I don’t feel I can do.” I explained the reasons that I thought this would benefit her business, and that all it would take was her time and knowledge. She still wasn’t interested, so I decided to let the conversation go at this time. Over the next few months, I would bring the conversation back to article writing and finally she agreed to write her first article. Well, fast forward 12 months and not only is she published in various leading print magazines here in Australia, but she is being paid to write for a health and fitness magazine in the UK. It’s something that she never imagined was possible.

Now matter what you do, it’s time for you to give writing a try, and who knows where you may end up! If you do currently write articles for your newsletters or blog, challenge yourself to make contact with industry magazines, and see what you can have published. I would love to hear what happens for you, so let me know…. Tweet

What is the best piece of advice you have received as an entrepreneur?

Would love to know what you think......Please take a moment to share your thoughts. Tweet

Today’s article is a quick tip and I want to focus on one recurring question that is coming up in the responses to the survey. This is about marketing your products and services to clients and how to have clients understand what you are saying.

So I’ve put together these quick tips to assist you:

1. Make sure you really understand your audience. If you don’t know what your prospects or clients need from you, ask questions. You can do this very simply by doing something like what I have done this week. Survey your clients, ask them what you want to know and try and find out what they need from you. I’ve used a tool called Survey Monkey to help me understand more about you! It's easy to use and the information you receive is valuable in relation to how you can better support your clients.

2. Make sure you have the right offer in place. Once you know more about what your clients want from you, then you can make them an offer that speaks directly to their needs and wants. An offer that will allievate any issues or challenges they may facing

3. Ask yourself, “What is the outcome I want from this offer, from this newsletter, from this……?”. Make sure you understand how your audience wants to be spoken to. Than, be very clear on the messages you are sending out. Track and test your messages, and see which ones are having the greatest impact.

Remember, clarity in the understanding of your clients, in your offer, and in your message will support the continual growth of your business. If you're not sure where to start, don't stand there waiting, organise a Just-in-Time call with me, so that together we can get you moving in the right direction. Tweet

If you could have support for 90 days to grow your business, what area/s would you focus on?

Would love to know what you think......Please take a moment to share your thoughts.

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How good are you at listening? Is it something you really think about? Is listening really that important to running a successful business? I think so! You spend time developing clear messages for your prospective clients to read and hear, how often do you stop and really listen to what they have to say?

Listening is an important to skill to learn, and one that requires practise, especially to listening empathetically. When listening at this level, you can have a dramatic impact on your sales conversion. But, lets start by looking at the five levels of listening:

1) Ignoring – making no effort to listen,
2) Pretend listening – giving the appearance you are listening,
3) Selective listening – hearing only the parts of the conversation that interest you,
4) Active listening – paying attention to what the speaker says, and comparing that to your own experiences or requirements, and
5) Empathetic listening – listening and responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker’s words, intent, and feelings.

What type of listener are you? Most people will either listen selectively or actively, but to really understand and hear what someone is saying we need to listen empathetically. Few people really listen empathetically, and not only does empathetic listening involve a deep shift in paradigm, it requires practise.

We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking, or preparing to speak. They are filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel!”
“I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.”

These listeners constantly project their own home movies onto other people’s behaviour.

To listen effectively we need to put our egos to one side and focus on helping the other person express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. The important thing to remember is that listening to someone is not the same as agreeing with him or her. We often feel that we give our power away by listening to someone else, but in fact listening is empowering. Learn to listen with your eyes, your heart as well as your ears.

To support your move into empathetic listening, here are the four stages you need to consider:
· Mimic the content of communication: simply repeat exactly what is said.
· Rephrase the content: put their (the other’s) meaning into your own words; this takes
thought or mental processing.
· Reflect feeling: we listen and look to the nature of the emotion behind the
communication, observing facial expression, body language, voice (tone, intensity,
volume), etc.
· Rephrase the content and reflect the feeling: we put both the other’s verbal meaning
and emotional content in our own words.

So the next time you are in a conversation with someone, stop and think about what type of listening you are doing. If you’re not listening empathetically, are you really listening at all? Tweet