Aware EntrepreneurEnergize Your Ideas into Action

Creative work doesn’t always need pressure. Wouldn’t you rather create for the sheer pleasure of it, rather than trying to prove something? You just turn on your creative juices and let them flow.  I know I just commented the other day on a Seth Godin post. Ok, I really like his insights and he inspires me to write.  Seth Godin’s blog today talks about Diablo Cody who won an Oscar for writing the film Juno. She replied in an interview that she felt no pressure to live up to or top her previous performance. For her it was about treasuring her previous movie making experience and fully enjoying a new adventure in creation.

Sensationalist media wants to make it about the trauma and drama of success. What if  success wasn’t a goal,  but a result you get when you’re true to yourself and honor your creative work? What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments.

In his latest blog post Fear of Apples Seth Godin tells the story of going to the farmers market and being asked by several people which are the good apples. Apparently he looked like he knew. Even though he doesn’t look anything like a farmer.  Seth’s take on things (he has a lot of takes on things, often brilliant) is that people are afraid of many things. They’re afraid of too many choices. They’re afraid to waste  time and money or look foolish getting involved with something unknown. That includes your product or service.  Especially if it may change their world. What feeling must you generate for them not to be afraid?

So what do you care, you’ll just take the ones that aren’t afraid. But what if you could have more people coming to you wanting what you offer and they just need a little nudge? Often sales and marketing is affected by some little thing. Some ‘feeling’. And not just buying apples. In his great book “You, Inc, the Art of Selling Yourself”, Harry Beckwith tells the story of how a company made a multi million dollar decision based on a feeing. A Fortune 500 corporation was interviewing companies to handle it’s payroll. After several weeks of reviewing the different choices, the selection  commitee was stumped. The three finalist companies  looked equally good.

So they visited each finalist’s headquarters and took a short walk around. When they walked into the third companies lobby something felt different. Somehow right away, they ‘just knew’. Something ‘just felt right’. They were there all of four minutes and then headed home. At the airport they called the company and gave them the multi million dollar good news.

If you want more business, what must you do beyond providing excellent service and being professional? What feeling must you generate in people that would make them get past their fear. Especially if you’re offering them some form of transformation. What was Seth embodying that made people trust him? Yes he’s written 10 best selling books and Business Week called him “The Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age”.

But most likely those people at the farmers market didn’t know who he was. There had to be a feeling about him that he knew things. That he had integrity and could be trusted. Not just as a person, but as someone who could help them decide what to buy. So are you just offering a service? Or are you offering the energy and safe space that comes along with your experience and abilities? Is that what will make the difference in people hiring you and making their life richer and more expansive?

Don’t make it only about your talents and abilities. Be the energy and safe space that facilitates people to get past their fears. What if promoting your business was about being you and enlightening people about choices rather than just being competent or even brilliant at what you do? Would you be willing to step beyond your fears of being and be the ease, joy and glorious self expression that people are dying to be shown by your courage how to be?

In my last blog I talked about how you use practical intuition to find your unique value. So who are you serving? That’s the next question. Find your best customers. Who really wants what your offering and will pay for it. Start by creating a system to get ”real world’ feedback. Ask your customers questions directly and through customer surveys. Collect the responses.

Write them down and put them into categories. You can use a spreadsheet program. If you’re just starting out, you can send surveys to friends or bribe people on social networks with a simple free ebook. Use http://www.surveymonkey.com/ You can also do Google searches for “I want…” and see what people are saying. Or go on forums that cover your topic. Get some logical sense for what people are saying. What are their “pain points”.  Their dreams and desires. Then see beyond the surface. What are they really saying.

Ask unlimited questions like “What else do I need to know that I’m not aware of.” “what’s the greatest opportunity to serve my customers?” Just be with that question in an easy way without trying to figure it out with your mind. Insights will come to you and you’ll get quick powerful insights into what works. What will satisfy you personally, serve your customers and make profits for your business.

Ultimately it’s not information or even strategy that’s so important as your felt sense for who your customers are and what they feel. It’s your caring and generosity of spirit that moves them. When you combine that with living your unique value through your business you’ll automatically start to find and attract your best customers.

Practical intuition, see my previous posts, is a fast track way to find out whatever you need to know about your business. The first step for any business is to know who you are and your unique value. Some people like to just find desperate buyers and tailor their business to them. That may work for some people, especially if you’re offering a product. But if it’s important for you to offer service that reflects your values, you need to know yourself first.

So how do you do that? Questions. Asking the right questions and being really open to receive whatever you find out, is the key. Ask targeted questions of yourself,  your customers, your employees, mentors and associates.

“What stands out about us? What makes us unique?”  ”What are we especially good at?” “What made you choose our business over others.”

Don’t form an opinion before you get started. Let go of any assumptions and judgments about who you are and what you’re really good at. You may think you know your unique value, but chances are you’re missing something. At the very least you can get the keywords that people use to describe your service. And really every business is a service, even if you sell a commodity product like kleenex. It’s the added value of doing business with you that makes you unique and makes people want to know you, like you, trust you and buy from you.

So receive who and what you are. The good, the bad and the ugly. Yes if you really ask questions and are open to receive all the answers you will receive “negative” feedback. It’s only by receiving your shortcomings and not judging yourself that you can fully receive what makes you and your company great. Uniquely qualified to serve people. Choose to let go of those limitations with out going into judgment and fully embrace your strengths.

When you get all the feedback that tells your unique value, write it all down. Start refining and editing a short unique selling proposition using the keywords. Get it down to a sentence of 5 or 6 words. Leave it alone for awhile come back to it later. Let your imagination and intuition work their magic. You never know what creative wording can make the difference between success and failure. Get feedback from others. You can even test it with PPC and Adsense ads. And compare results. Sometimes feedback can spark your imagination to bring different viewpoints into one powerful message. Once you have something that really works incorporate it into all of your marketing communications.

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Overwhelm happens because you have been taught to not trust yourself.  In my last post I talked about how 99% of people lose the genius of  their childhood from ‘color inside the lines’ education. When you’re able to trust and be present as you without judgments, you don’t get overwhelmed. There’s a pivotal moment in the Broadway play “South Pacific” where U.S. Navy nurse Nellie Forbush is falling in love with French plantation owner Emile de Becque. Then she discovers that he has ‘native’ children. Suddenly all her childhood prejudice comes up to stop her. Later an American sailor who is in love with a native girl and is fighting his own prejudice explains with a song to Emile  “You have to be carefully taught how to hate.”

At the time the play came out in 1949 there was still a tremendous amount of socially accepted prejudice. A great deal of pressure was put on the producers to not include the song in the play. But they kept it in anyway. It rang so true. We all know inside ourselves how  society tries to stop us from being the full brilliance and caring that we are.

When your creativity and imagination  gets shut down, you get set up to fail as a creator and innovator. You get set up to fail as you.
You lose your natural ability to not to be overwhelmed by life. These days a lot of that overwhelm, especially for entrepreneurs and business owners, comes from internet information overload and dealing with the turbulence of the recession.

For most people, some part of you has been made to believe that you were supposed to only color inside the lines and eat all the food on your plate even if your body didn’t want it. That you can’t just know the answer.You had to show all the steps you took to find the solution.

You’re not supposed to just know. You’re supposed to conform and behave according to the rules. You get overwhelmed because you’ve bought the lie that you can’t access all of your courage, your quickness, your imagination, your genius. People in society who are stuck in limiting thoughts and behavior like to deny  the ease with which you can be curious, experiment, get results, play and have fun.

What if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you stepped away from the limits society puts on you and chose to reclaim all of you. Your brilliance, your imagination, your resourcefulnes, your ability to not be overwhelmed by all the craziness and ‘too much’ that life throws your way?

What if you could wake up the genius in you? Buckminister Fuller once said:
“Everyone is born a genius yet 99% of people are degeniused by society.”
For most people your genius gets shut down at a young age. A pretty sad commentary on how personal creativity and imagination are not really valued by society. Except for a few brave souls who persevere against judgments and ridicule to prove their worth to society. And often it’s too late for them to enjoy it. Like Galileo, Darwin, Van Gogh and so on…

What would it take for you to let go of all the judgments and shut downs that keep you from waking up the genius in you?

Here’s Tom Peters take on the need to educate for a creative society.

We live in a world where all economic value comes from creativity and innovation. It’s imperative that we wake up our creative genius to help ourselves and society move forward dynamically. The key is have the courage to not listen to those teachers from your childhood who told you to color inside the lines. I’d love to hear your comments.

There are 5 ways to profit with practical intuition. Actually there are more than that, but I’ll cover these 5 most important ways here. In my last post, I talked about how to use your intuition and insight to skip over irrelevent details and look at what’s really vital for you to know and act on.  By practicing in small ways and checking on your results you can build more confidence and skill using your insights. You can start to use your increased insight on the five strategic ways to profit with your business.

1. Have a clear vision of your company’s unique value and how you can make the most of it.
2. Know who your best customers are, what they want and how to reach and convert them at the lowest effective cost possible.
3. Make your customers feel special and cared for.  Maintain the highest qualilty customer support.
4. Develop effective  systems to streamline your business operation and keep improving them.
5. Know the key areas of your business to monitor results and stay on top of them.

By looking at these areas in an out of the box ways, you’ll be able to innovate and get better results faster and easier. I’ll cover the first area to look at today and follow up with the rest in forthcoming posts. To begin with you clarify your business vision by getting in touch and becoming intimately familiar with all the aspects of what you would like your business to look like. Both intuitively and logically. What’s important to you personally and professionally? Get to the heart of what you’re offering and what makes you different. How do you solve or prevent problems for people? What does that actually  look like in practice? Write it all down and ruthlessly edit out  all the vague generalized statements. Take time to really look at this core vision for your business. Your customers’ testimonials will often give you your greatest  insights. Such things as “I love your software, it’s simple and easy to use, yet it handles our billing system thoroughly and effectively”.

If you follow your insight, you should be able to come up with a clear effective mission statement and well targeted Unique Selling Proposition to differentiate yourself and promote your brand. At times  it can help to get personal coaching to clear the blocks and uncertainties that are keeping  you from seeing clearly.

Your Primary Action Steps

Each strategic way to grow your business has specific action steps that will streamline you achieving them. How do you know which actions that will give you the best results in the fastest time with the least amount of effort? Brainstorming with partners, employees and business specialists;  looking at what competitors and companies in other industries are doing;  reading business books and magazines. All good, but ultimately it’s not information and input that’s so important as your ability to recognize the best strategy when it comes along.

Otherwise you can waste a lot of time jumping  from one idea to another. Yes,  find someone you trust to give you sound advice and counseling, but also develop your own sense of what works for your company. Use, but don’t depend solely on outside advice. You have to have a direct conscious and interactive relationship with your targeted results on a daily basis.

Running a business even for a solo-preneur can get very complicated. One essential key to maximizing your profits is to run all aspects of your business keeping the big picture in mind while you’re looking at the smallest details. Look for how your unique value informs each action and maximizes it’s contribution to your business as a whole. Sometimes it can help to hire a coach to help you see things that are blocking you that you’re not aware of.

Practical intuition is a key tool for making fast accurate business decisions. In my last post, I talked about how judgments and assumptions can cripple your ability to see opportunities and challenges for your business. It will make a huge difference if you let go of your judgments and assumptions.

Once let go of those limiting thoughts, and really pay attention to what is,  you’ll find your brain can be much  more effective. Both logically and intuitively. One of the most powerful ways to use your intuition and insight is to learn to skip over irrelevent details and find what’s really vital for you to know. I’m sure you’ve experienced information overload. Too many emails, too many key indicators and reports to look at… how do you sort it all out and find what’s valuable for you to know right now? Your logical brain is very good at math, accounting and finance, statistical analysis. You can get great data to guide your business. But you still have to know what to do with it. To sort out all the details and  come up with innovative ideas, your intuitive brain can do a much better job.  So how to you start using your practical intuition? Ask.

That’s right, the old saying goes “Ask and you shall receive.” Except it’s not really automatic. Not unless you ask and Are Willing to Receive. And you  get into a state of receiving with your intuition when your mind is quiet.  Let your logical brain rest. It’s very good at math, accounting and finance, statistical analysis. Not so good at taking in a lot of information and quickly finding just what you need to know in that moment. Your intuitive brain can do a much better faster job of that.

Ask your intuitive brain to switch on. Just say: “Intuition, turn on at the count of One… Two… Three!”  Relax and just start browsing. If you just relax and browse through the information,  the perfect tactic will pop into your mind  or the right prospect’s name to call will stand out on the list. You’ll begin to get a felt sense for the energy to follow. Start by making small decisions with little or no downside. Monitor your results. If you keep  at it you’ll start to develop a stronger intuition based on real world results. Try it and see if it works for you. I’d love to hear your feedback.

There’s one key strategy to make your business thrive  in today’s harsh business climate. It’s a specific  way to think outside the box and handle change effectively. The global economic crisis  is  putting a lot of stress on business people  from  solopreneurs to  Fortune 500 CEO’s. Many are confused and lacking effective new solutions. The important thing to know  is that this is a very non-traditional recession and you have to think outside the box in order to thrive in it.  Unfortunately a lot of companies are not responding in innovative ways ASTD blog. They’re experiencing  a lot of pain with diminishing sales, lagging profits and anemic cash flow. The good news is that it’s  forcing business owners to run their businesses at optimum levels. The bad news is that a lot of companies are not changing and innovating to adapt for the long haul. It’s going to be change or die. There’s no room anymore for wasted time, money or effort. You have to create a flexible accurate business strategy and dynamically put it into action in order to stop the losses and  maximize your profits and cash flow in new and more effective ways.

There are five  strategic ways that are crucial to increase your profits and cash flow. I’ll cover those 5 key strategies  in my next blog post. For now I’d like to talk about how you can rev up your business intuition and insight even before you start looking at these 5 areas. The key to clear and effective business planning  is not just asking the right questions, it’s having the clarity of mind to look at your business and  see new and unexpected solutions.

How to Avoid False Assumptions

So often we look at things and only see what we want to see. How many judgments and assumptions do you use to shut off your ability to see outside the box you’ve created? If you ask the question: “Who are our best customers?” you can get very good data back from  your sales records (assuming you kept good records).  But if you start with false assumptions and hold onto them, you’ll make poor decisions no matter how good your data is. So how do you change that?

Let go of your judgments that are clouding your vision.  It’s a choice and an ongoing discipline. Get another perspective. Seek  feedback from different points of view and be willing to change. If that doesn’t work, hire a coach to walk you through the personal changes that will get you clearer. The bottom line is that these times require your personal best whatever it takes.

How to Receive More from the Questions you Ask

So often we ask a question and then come up with an immediate answer even before we’ve really looked at the evidence. What if instead of coming to conclusions right away and limiting the insights and creative solutions you could have, you left your mind open and really saw what was in front of you?

Sherlock Holmes was a master of observation. He could come up with amazing insights from the smallest bits of information about a person or situation.  Some slight detail about how someone was dressed, the way they walked or moved their body could tell him where they came from and what they did for a living. That came from his clear vision and willingness to receive the smallest bits of pertinent information. He could receive all those insights not just because of his sharp intellect, but because he was willing to see past the surface of apparent sameness. Most people aren’t willing to receive that amount of information from things that they see all the time.

So if you want to make your business thrive no matter what’s going on with the economy, let go of your judgments and assumptions and really receive what you need to know so you can start contributing to your company instead of choking it to death. I’d love to hear your feedback.

A lot has been said about business intuition and it’s significant role in making decisions. CEO’s of top Fortune 500 companies frequently consult with  their gut instincts to make critical decisions. See my Squidoo page How to Make Life-Changing Business Decisions with Ease, Speed and Accuracy. Great article if I do say so myself. But there’s another vital use for intuition in business. That’s knowing yourself and getting past your  limiting thought and behavior patterns. That’s where a skilled and experienced coach can make a tremendous difference for you as a business owner. They can shed light on hidden limiting beliefs that  sabotage your business success. As you work with an intuitive coach, you not only gain their insight and ability to help you shift, you start to develop your own ‘inner gremlin’ detection ability. Over time you get more free of limiting patterns that are keeping your business from expanding  to the next level and the next and the next. It’s amazing the number of liming beliefs you can have and how imbeded they can be in your subconscious. You don’t want to be processing yourself at work, but a well timed break to let go of something bothering you or to get clear and focused before an important business meeting can remove the cause of a lot of failure and lack of business success. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about all this.