Last week the world got a lesson on how “patience prevails” – if they were watching.
 
In Indian Wells, California, at the BNP Parabis Open, a kid from North Carolina, who, at 6’9″ could just as easily be a winner on the basketball court as the tennis court flexed not only his athletic muscles but his patience mucles and won big time.
 
John Isner upset the world’s number one player, Novak Djokovic (who had a perfect grand slam record last year!) and advanced to the finals in a top championship,launching himself into the top 10 for the first time.
 
While John beating Novak was exciting, I thought the real interesting story was in the match he had before, the one between him and Gil Simon. Gil Simon is not a seeded player but he is one of the most frustrating for many of top tennis players in the game today. Gil’s strategy? Return every ball, don’t go for flashy winners, and keep his opponents having to play the next ball in the rally.
 
In essence, he wears his opponents down. He’s got an infinite amount of patience.
 
The opponent Gil faced right before John Isner was the up and coming young American superstar, Ryan Harrison. Ryan is immensely talented and equally fiery and tempermental. Ryan was so close to beating Gil but lost the match because he lost patience. He wanted to ‘finish each point already’, and Gil forced him into errors that cost him the match.
 
John Isner, on the other hand, is no stranger to patience. He is already famous for his 11 hour, 3-day marathon tie breaker with Mahut at Wimbledon – which he won. How many people could have withstood even an hour tie-breaker, much less a 3-day one?
 
So at Indian Wells, John outpatienced Gil Simon, won that match and went on to beat Novak Djokovic, catapulting him into his first finals match at a major tournament.
 
Do you have the patience to wait out lack of success, or your opponents? How many of us have the patience to keep reaching out to that ideal prospect, hearing no, no,no until we finally hear that yes?
 
“Patience is a virtue”. We’ve heard it since childhood but take a look at what we actually expect now: instantaneous replies by email, buy with one click, and expecting immediate results in business or we deem that effort a failure.
 
Where has your lack of patience cost you a big price? Where could you add in a dose of patience and win – in your business, with your kids, with your job, with your clients?
 
I’m taking a lesson from John Isner’s playbook. I don’t have to be 6’9″ to get that the payoff is available for those who build the patience muscle.
I’m taking a lesson from John Isner’s playbook. I don’t have to be 6’9″ to get that the payoff is available for those who build the patience muscle.

I’m amazed by how unprepared some of the entrepre-pitchers are, but also how indecisive they often are. Frequently, the Sharks are the best deal they’ve ever gotten and yet they think about it so long they lose the deal. 

Shark Tank is on Friday nights at 8 PM on ABC.

  ]]> http://thebusinessfox.com/blog/2012/03/13/would-you-sink-or-swim-in-the-tank/feed/ 0 http://thebusinessfox.com/blog/2012/02/24/harvards-doing-it-so-should-you/ http://thebusinessfox.com/blog/2012/02/24/harvards-doing-it-so-should-you/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:17:49 +0000 Nancy Fox http://thebusinessfox.com/blog/?p=375 When I began my business back in 1998, a new way of being trained was just emerging.

These business delivery models will never be replaced.

• Not all e-learning or e-courses are created equal. Big disparity in content quality.
• The courses must be organized correctly for one to easily complete the program.
• The topics might be the same, the leaders and delivery style are very different.
• The courses run the gamut in pricing.
• It’s really helpful to have a “what’s next” and Q&A components for implementation support.

How can I get my newsletters opened?

How can I get people to read my blogs?

What should I write about that will attract my ideal niche market?

How should I title my signature talk?

These are really great questions and so important for us answer in order to make our marketing efforts pay off. After all, what good is reaching out to your community with great articles and content if people don’t read them? How can you build a relationship with your people if they don’t receive the connection?

The answer lies not in the brilliance of your content. These days it lies squarely in the way you lead into your content – through the Subject Line.  Capturing people’s attention with
all of the email, junk, and filler is not an easy task. Your writing must be transformed so that people cannot resist finding out more.

There are several techniques to use:

1. Surprise them (or make them irresistibly curious)

2. Relieve a big pain

3. Give them a big benefit

That’s it.

To capture people’s attention and bring them to action, you have to be willing to use words that engage, but also compel. Words like:

How To, Open This, Call me, Urgent, Alert, often capture attention. But then you must compel as well.

Compelling people is usually a function of relieving a large painful issue.

Here’s an example of a great book title:

Huge Profits With A Tiny List, by Connie Ragen Green

Who doesn’t want to have big profits? And the pain? Most people don’t have big lists but wish they did. Connie Ragen Green takes the pain away and gives a big benefit
(and the book is very simple to read, and also gives very good implementable info).

Giving people a number of ways you will help them is another excellent Subject Line or Signature Talk tool:

5 Ways to Get More Speaking Gigs

10 Ways to Use Facebook For Business Success

7 Ways to Follow Up With Contacts After A Networking Event

3 Must Dos For Writing Subject Lines That Get Opened 

Want more ideas for Subject Lines That Sell for your business?

Write to me – nancy@thebusinessfox.com and watch for my upcoming webinars on marketing and elearning programs to build your business in 2012.

This is what my clients, contacts, colleagues tell me they want day in, day out.

They also want balance in life so that they are not working themselves into the ground.

The dilemma? More clients means more hours worked.

It’s actually funny if you think about it: you get a wave of new clients (good news) then you have to work alot of hours either face to face, chained to the phone, or get on an airplane to meet with them (bad news) Then, you’re finished with that engagement and you have to do it all over again – market to new people, engage new clients, work more hours to generate the revenue.

This is not freedom. This is trading hours for dollars. This is the challenge every service provider, consultant, coach, speaker, and trainer faces: How to grow the business without simply adding more hours worked.

The solution? Passive revenue. Who doesn’t love the idea of making money while you sleep? Is this easier said than done? Well, certainly, it is not a get rich quick promise. Yet passive revenue should be part of every entrepreneur’s business model

How do you generate passive revenue? The beautiful news is that today, technology allows us to service and educate more people, generate a steady stream of revenue, and greater flexibility of time, place, and ways to absorb information, motivation, and education more than ever before.

Enter: Elearning programs and products.

If your business is a service or information/knowledge based business, elearning offers you a treasure trove of opportunity.

What is elearning exactly?

Elearning or distance learning includes teleclasses or teleconferences, webinars, digital ebooks, edu-videos, digital infoproducts, pdfs, reports, audios and more….

Imagine taking what you normally deliver live in a a full day or two days after traveling a whole day there and back and now creating 7-8 learning modules that you deliver from the comfort of your office or home, and make them into tangible products that you formulate or create once and then sell and deliver over and over and over. No airplanes, cars, traffic, delays, or weather issues. And your clients get to keep the recordings, videos, powerpoints, and work on each module at their individual pace. You can even ensure their progress by requiring the completion of one module before the receipt of the next.

Many people fear that we cannot translate certain consultative information into elearning, or that we will lose the personal connection, and relationships, if we don’t do live coaching, training, consulting, or speaking.

Au contraire.

This is not a case for the elimination of live events. It is an invitation to layer into your business the method of elearning so you can multiply and monetize your services and information. Your clients will have a tangible product to refer to (this is huge as so many find marketing coaching and consulting difficult because they seem so intangible to prospects) and everyone can benefit from choice of when and where to learn.

To be fair, there are alot of elearning programs and products out there. A great deal of it is way too simplistic and poorly executed so people don’t learn as much as they can or want to. The key is to formulate your elearning programs with the following 3 essentials:

1. Extreme targeting – What will people get from the program, what solution(s) will it provide, and exactly who wants this information (knowing the specific pain points is critical in the design of your content).

2. Step by step, paint-by-numbers information delivery - Good elearning must be structured so that all questions are answered either by the actual course content OR through Q&A sessions, or FAQ’s.

3. Learning style variety – Different people learn in different ways. Some like to read, some like to listen, some like a combination. Audios, transcripts, Powerpoint slides, videos may all be required so that your elearning solution is delivered in ways your specific market prefers to intake info.

Do it yourself videos, audios, editing, powerpoint integration with audios have gotten so easy and so inexpensive that it will be a no-brainer to build your passive revenue through elearning programs and products.

For more information on how you can begin to build your custom elearning programs and passive profit streams, subscribe to my newsletter The Business Fox Bulletin at www.thebusinessfox.com as I will be publishing some high-content articles about elearning passive profits. And stay tuned for our new website and upcoming programs on passive revenue and elearning for your business.

Bob and Betty, consultants to corporations, are traveling on traffic-infested freeways and on airplanes 2-3 times a month to work with their clients.

Sally’s firm expects her to bill out a minimum of 22-2300 hours a year. She will, of course make more money for every hour she works,bills, and collects.

Stan has a growing executive coaching business and he is booked solid. He has been trying to increase his business for the last year but can’t figure out how to expand unless he hires
employees.

Each of these folks has a very good problem: They have lots of clients.

The bad news? They don’t make money unless they are physically on site working and they can only make a difference with a finite number of people when it is one to one.

I certainly experienced this situation firsthand when my business grew to “full” a number of years ago.

This is not a new issue. It’s been written about many, many times.

Michael Port actually made oodles teaching the old standard business model in his book: Book Yourself Solid.

Then the antidote was written about and created a tidal wave of optimism when Tim Ferris wrote his book, The 4-Hour Work Week, several years ago.

Michael Gerber addressed it as well in his bestseller: The E-Myth.

The problem really lies not with lazy people who don’t want to work alot or at all, or people who expect to “get rich quick.”

The reason so many are interested and hungry to learn about ways to generate passive income is because they have realized:

if the only way they generate revenue is while they are physically present, eventually they will burn out, and their effectiveness will diminish, and they cannot grow their business.

Are there solutions? Absolutely – and they take effort, willingness to develop an additional business approach (notice I didn’t say abandon the old model – I said to include an additional
one) and some solid strategies for patiently, consistently growing recurring, passive revenues streams.

Here are some examples within the field of consulting, coaching, training, and professional services:

• Membership programs
• Group coaching and training
  programs
• Subscription models
• Affiliate programs
• Joint venture partnerships
• E-books
• Pre-recorded e-learning courses
  and programs – webinars, teleclasses, etc.
• Downloadable tools, templates,
  and forms
• Online assessments

These are just a few of the ways people are marketing and delivering information, knowledge, and advice virtually so that they can be earning more in less time and from wherever they are – awake or asleep. (Who doesn’t love the idea of making money while sleeping?)

The idea of creating once, selling many times to many people in many locations is only going to become more and more appealing as time goes on, as the economy requires people to be more selective with how they invest their time and dollars for travel and other services, and as technology becomes better and more user friendly for even the most technologyy-challenged.

Your ability to translate your unique talents and knowledge into repeatable deliverable information streams will be a key factor in determining whether making more with less work,
and passive income is fact or fiction for you.

Nothing could be further from the truth – or smart.

I saw a television show a while ago featuring Warren Buffett and Bill Gates giving a talk to students at  Columbia University. It was a fabulous dialogue between two of the brightest
business minds of our time.

What struck me?

BOTH of them had had mentors who advised THEM on their business direction and careers.

Too often, I work with successful entrepreneurs and professionals who like the idea of improvement, but wouldn’t consider (or just simply resist) spending their time and money on
professional development or even working with a mentor themselves.

Listen:

You gotta learn to grow. You gotta take input and coaching to improve. You gotta “sharpen your saw” to  succeed.

In today’s competitive environment, staying the same is actually sliding backward. There is so much to
learn, so much information, innovation is happening at the speed of light.

Let’s say you buy into my “sharpen your saw” advice. How do you choose where to spend your time learning
and with whom? Here are a few tips from someone who is a work in progress, someone who will NEVER graduate from the school of
success and life, someone who is a learning junkie and glad of it (If my  corporate colleagues from my past life could see me now, they would shake their
heads in disbelief- I was a hard case back then:).

• Take an advanced course in something you are already good at. Great at speaking ? Go the next step. Excellent at social media – seek out an advanced course and dive in.
  Leadership is your thing? Find a top-tier conference and hang with the best of  the best leaders to stretch into higher ground.  (I recently took my own coaching here and took an advanced speaking workshop to take my speaking to the next level).
• Learn something you are absolutely certain has no relevance to your business or life. Think you don’t even have time to learn more about what is relevant? Think again. You have no idea how an art class, a dance class, a cooking class, a social media class, an e-learning course could impact how you see your business, give you an idea you
  would never have had, or meet someone who could catapult you into a whole new realm of success.
• Get a top-grade mentor. It’s ridiculous to believe that great sports talents ALL hire coaches, but we business people only regard mentors as incidentals. This is a
  perfect example of why people TALK about success, but few actually PRACTICE WHAT IT TAKES to achieve success. I’m talking directly to the coaches and consultants
  out there who often think that others should hire them, but they don’t REALLY need an advisor. What’s the message you are communicating to the business community by this approach?

There was a lumberjack.
First week on the job, his boss was thrilled because he sawed 50 trees. The next week on the job, he sawed 20 trees. His boss was a little concerned. The following week, the lumberjack sawed only 10 trees. His boss asked him what was wrong and told him to get his production up or else.

Our lumberjack was perplexed. He couldn’t figure it out. He knew his job, he was strong and energetic. Then the lightbulb went on over his head. That next week his production went back up to 50 trees.

His happy boss asked him how he did it.

Our lumberjack smiled and said,  “I sharpened my saw.”

I don’t think learning to “manage” time as many of the books teach us (goodness knows I’ve studied many of these books and also taught Time Management workshops to many corporations) is the answer. So I’m not going to tell you all about delegation and prioritization in this article. You already know all about that.

My secret weapon, the one that allows me to accomplish so much more, faster, is something I learned from one of the smartest mentors I’ve had, Paul Turro. Paul talks about “expanding time.” I stopped looking at time as something to be saved, hoarded, or controlled. I look at time not to be managed but to be stretched, like salt water taffy.

Can’t be done, you say? We’ve only got 24/7. Very true. But it’s our perception of, relationship to time that actually stymies us and has us being less productive, and feeling more overwhelmed.

Here are some examples and techniques you can use to stretch time and your productivity:

1. Kill two birds with one stone whenever possible. A client of mine wanted to write a book. He also strongly wanted to build his business and meet top-tier decision makers. Problem: No time to do both. Time-stretching solution: Interview top-tier decision makers for his book. Win-Win all the way around. Client more easily got in front of decision makers by asking to interview them for his book. Now, he is finishing his book AND one of his interviewees became an ideal client.

2. Create Bucket Lists (no not the kind you make about what you want to do before you Kick The Bucket)

People lose focus when they can’t get their arms around a project or there are too many details and tasks to address. Time-stretching solution: Think about every concept going into a “bucket” vs. a project management tool. then, each bucket is represented by a color-coded post it note that you can easily move around a bulletin board or flip chart paper. The bucket approach is great because if you forget something you can put more into the bucket and still stay focused, organized. This is a great approach for website content development, marketing calendaring, book creation, event planning and even prioritizing. There is an ease in organizing thoughts and actions, reducing stress and strain about managing time, and it becomes about creating time not fighting it.

3.Time Stretching Technology. Who says you have to go out to lunch, breakfast, or even coffee to be face to face with people? I love video Skype. Time expands because I am “with” that person and I am not spinning wheels – literally – on the freeway or otherwise. This is just one example of using available technology to make things simpler, easier, and more efficient.

4. A New Relationship To Time. I have found that giving in to anxiety over how little time I have actually slows my productivity down. I embrace the belief that I can and will get more done than I realize, if I use all the resources I have at my disposal, and don’t allow myself to go down internet-surfing rabbit holes and other distractions. It’s very similar to letting go of fear around money and finances. There is enough time. One time-stretching tool I use in my relationship to time is what one of my clients calls time chunking

Ever realize after you’ve completed a project that it didn’t take as long as you thought it would? That’s right, most tasks take significantly less time than we think they will. Think in terms of manageable time chunks. Some say 20 minute chunks for an action step or project is ideal. I like 30 minute time chunks. Writing an article, having a prospect conversation, writing a proposal – time is stretched when you are clear about what you are doing within a time-set boundary. You can fit more chunks into your day than you ever realized. and sometimes when you make this process a practice, you complete even before the allotted time chunk.

5. Put More On Your Plate. People often seek to take really nutritious things off their place due to the perception and worry about not having enough time. In fact, they don’t see how to do this AND that. If they could see ways to take more of the right things on without making errors and feeling overwhelmed, they most certainly would.

A client of mine once said he’d have to miss a very important networking event I had organized, one where his ideal decision-makers would be attending. Why? He had to prepare for an important client meeting. Obviously, both were important. Of course, the client meeting takes precendence, right?

However, what if it wasn’t This or That? What if it could be both?

I suggested my client come to the networking event for 20 minutes, max 1/2 hour. He’d meet the ideal people, create the initial contacts and relationships, set the stage for excellent follow up and still be back at his desk to effectively prepare for his meeting with a key client.

They say you should stretch your muscles everyday. Why not Time?

That’s exactly what happened to me recently.

I was speaking with a client recently who was working on and grappling with closing a particular piece of new business.

She was describing a scenario to me where her prospect needed greater proficiency and skill in her position in order to prevent losing a promotion to a more junior candidate. As I listened to my client describing the way she was approaching bringing the prospective client engagement to completion, it was as though a spotlight was shining down on the dilemma, illuminating the very source of disconnection.

She was trying to “get the prospect” to act in a certain way. She was seeing the prospect as “faulty” and unintentionally communicating this to her. She was seeing her prospect as an adversary: her vs. me, them vs. us!

This realization hit me like a ton of bricks.
How often do we see our prospects as allies, as opposed to adversaries before the deal is sealed? I am not talking about after the engagement letter is signed, but rather prior to the “close”. Not very often, I assert. On some level, we see the prospect as being “on the other side”.

In this age of heavy-duty marketing and pitching, it’s a challenge for prospects not to see suppliers, vendors, service providers as people who want something from them – mainly business. So it goes both ways: prospects can see their service providers as adversaries as wanting the business (and money) from them, and we, as service providers, can see the prospect as an adversary to “win them over” to our side of the field.

And out of this “AHA” comes some really rich opportunity.
This is where there is a huge opportunity for greater success and satisfaction for all involved IF we transform how we view the process of attracting and engaging clients: going from a them vs. us to an us-us relationship.

OK, that’s nice, you say, but HOW do we actually transform this relationship and our own viewpoint?

I see three specific ways of shifting your perspective regarding your prospects BEFORE the engagement:

1.You view each other as collaborators - no winner, no loser. (similar to the idea of win-win but actually giving a face to each collaborator).

2. What problem/objective/challenge are you solving together? Think of mentally inviting your prospect to be your partner in problem solving, and then demonstrate how you will partner with your prospective client.

3. If / when money becomes a sticking point, avoid convincing. Ask yourself if you’ve really been honest with yourself about the potential client. Has this prospect been truly interested, or just kicking tires? This is the time to ask your prospective client, your collaborator, alot of questions about price/value relationship in his/her mind. Ask how he/she sees it as a win for them? This is the biggest challenge because often service provider and prospect are on the same side UNTIL money enters the equation.

Make no mistake, sometimes prospective clients see us as adversaries and bring the same doubts to the table. It is our responsibility as guides in the process to be the first to shift our perspective and thus shift the relationship.

This much I have learned, both in my own business and by watching the most successful entrepreneurs and professionals.

It always feels right when a new client/service provider relationship kicks off with both parties feeling as though they on the same page, on the same side, and that all are working in concert for the client’s utmost success.