Do you want to be the go-to person in your field?
Do you want people to refer you to their colleagues and even clients?
Do you want to stand out from the crowd?
Do you want to be known for something?
Doing this is more than your brand…more than your marketing plan…more than what you charge….
It requires these three things:
- A solid brand based on your intrinsic values
- Willingness to make decisions quickly and honestly
- Commitment to be vulnerable
Here are a few ways I’ve seen folks playing small:
Maybe you change your mind consistently about your target market or your message.
(After all, if you stay confused, you never have to really get in the game right?)
Maybe you tell yourself that you are too busy to network with others because you have s#!t to do. It’s easier to keep yourself disconnected from others so no one knows what you are up to and if no one knows then you can let yourself off the hook.
(Business building requires relationships folks, otherwise you have a hollow marketing plan that falls flat.)
What do you want to be known for?
One of the first exercises I took my clients through was asking them what they want to be known for in their business and how they want their loved ones to remember them after they are gone from this life.
I get that can feel like a somber conversation. And doing this exercise shows you where your values are and what your BRAND is.
Speaking of branding, I have a guest presenter sharing the stage with me at this retreat. Nicole Lundy is a master at personal branding. I love this woman! Any entrepreneur who wants to be a trailblazer and be VISIBLE deserves to connect with Nicole. My clients are in for such a treat.
The values you want your loved ones to remember you for are the values you will fight for in your business. It’s how you treat your clients. it’s how you want people to feel around you and like Maya Angelou says, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The Decisions You Can BANK On:
1. Choose your audience.
Who do you want to work with? You can’t serve everyone. So choose who you really want to work with. Hint: your best clients will slightly intimidate you and that is a good thing because when you uplevel to serve your ideal clients, you will uplevel your own expertise and who are.
2. Choose your business model.
Do you host an annual live event with 100+ people? Or do you host small workshops and retreats?
Do you have one main offer? Or different levels?
Do you have coaches and consultants who work under you? Or do you leverage by creating more information products so you can help more people.
Just because your mentor does their business a certain way, doesn’t mean your business model has to look that way.
Choose how you want to work with people. What lights you up? What fills your heart? What makes you a little nervous? That nervousness is a good thing because you always want to be on the edge instead of falling into the comfort of mediocrity.
3. Choose your Focus.
Chances are you are good at a lot of things. But you’ve got to let go of the good, so you can claim the GREAT.
I’m great at creating WordPress websites. I used to teach workshops on the topic. I noticed that at the end of my workshops, I would be exhausted. It would take me three days to recover from just a 1-day workshop.
That was a clue that teaching these workshops were not my genius. It was in my zone of excellence, but not my genius. (Read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks for more info on your Zone of Genius.)
I’m also pretty good at graphic design but I don’t enjoy doing it for other people. I COULD create a business doing websites and graphic design for people but it’s draining and not exciting to me.
I could also be a standard marketing coach, but if we don’t talk about Soul Purpose and your Intuition, marketing falls flat and I get bored talking just about marketing if we don’t talk about the SOUL behind it.
So I claim the space of being a business intuitive and a kick-ass strategist. It’s what lights me up. It’s my zone of genius. And it takes courage to claim that instead of playing small by saying I can do all of these other things too.
What do I want to be known for? Changing the world by empowering soulful women entrepreneurs to tap into their deeper gifts and make money by doing it. THAT is how we change lives. THAT is how we fund the causes we believe in.
And there are others who claim their genius in other ways. When everyone does their GENIUS, we can transform more lives.
