There is no such thing as an “easy sell” — Insights from The Art of Earning LIVE
I thought the presentation was real and relatable. The concepts were presented in a way that made them feel accessible. It wasn’t nuts & bolts… It was more cerebral and more elegant a presentation. I loved the focus on relationship and human interaction. I could go on and on. My brain is buzzing.
— Stephanie Corfee
Last week, I finally — finally — hosted my first live event: The Art of Earning LIVE. Carrie and I had been planning it since August. Big decisions here, little details there: last week, it all came together.
In the first teaching session, one of the questions I posed to attendees was:
“How are you making your customers richer?”
Not just in terms money, of course, but overall wealth. Are you enabling them to live healthier lives? Are you creating stronger connections between them & those they love? Are you imparting knowledge that grows their stores of intellectual wealth?
It’s a question I’ve asked here before.
The possibilities are endless. There are so many ways to make our customers richer, to add real value to their lives. But it’s something we think very little about. It’s not just about money but about enabling more connected, more engaged, more meaningful lives.
Instead, we try to sell them on personal transformation (nope, no one believes you can buy that). Or we just keep our nose to the grindstone, working on what we’re working ON (not towards), and try to sell something.
Lesson: nothing is an easy sell except for the easy-as-1-2-3 things you don’t want to be working on.
Don’t get me wrong. An easy sell is great. That product that you know would be easy-as-1-2-3 for both you & your client is probably a great investment in your time. It’s probably a great buy for your customer.
But how long is easy-as-1-2-3 going to keep you interested?
Is easy-as-1-2-3 your greatest work?
What does this have to do with The Art of Earning LIVE?
It was a hard sell.
Let me say that again: it was a hard sell.
The people I planned it with said, “Oh my goodness! This is amazing! People will be fumbling over themselves to buy it!”
When the sales didn’t roll in right away, we thought about the variables: price, location, experience, curriculum, marketing… we made some pretty serious pivots. We changed our approach. We used contingency plans. We brought in extra help.
But in the end, I stayed true to my three touchpoints of You Economy business — the entire reason I planned a live event to begin with — and crafted an event that is already changing businesses in big ways. The Art of Earning LIVE was my greatest experiment, the biggest test of my entrepreneurial hypothesis, to date.
If, in the 21st century, people are looking for commercial exchange that delivers experience, connection, and meaning, I will deliver a product that encompasses all those things:
1) Experience: I wanted to create a true experience, from start to finish for those involved. I wanted them to feel pampered, supported, valuable.
2) Connection: I wanted those in attendance to become connected to each other. I wanted them to feel how their ideas, actions, and enthusiasm were inherently tied to every other person in the room. I wanted them to know that there were other people who cared about their success. I wanted them to reconnect to their own immanent value by seeing the value immanent in others.
3) Meaning: Perhaps most difficult to understand, I wanted people to know abundance. Attending The Art of Earning LIVE meant that they were a part of my abundance, celebrating their own abundance, and encouraging others in their abundance. Being there meant they were part of a growing movement of meaning-driven entrepreneurship.
I’m beyond proud to say that we accomplished these goals. Everyone who came to Philly – and even those who attended from home – expressed the sense of experience, connection, and meaning as I described.
We made our customers richer by providing a vessel for a supportive experience, personal connection, and abundant meaning.
Selling these ideas isn’t always easy. But that doesn’t negate their importance, their ability to transform, their capacity for long-lasting results.
It’s not that the value of connection, meaning, and experience is in question – when has it even been? – but it does need to be proven that they can be found in a commercial transaction.
This event was my attempt to prove that connection, experience, and meaning can be delivered on a grand scale. It was my boldest experiment to date. I’d say it was successful.
With each product I build, package I construct, or event I devise, the proof builds. Each time the proof builds, I’m able to further my mission and stretch towards my ambition.
Each new level, new offering, new pitch, there is a new element of uncertainty, a greater need for proof before purchase. This isn’t to be feared but embraced.
No, The Art of Earning LIVE wasn’t an easy sell. The next thing (and the next thing, and the next thing…) won’t be either.
My business is no longer on a slow & steady climb, it’s at the foot of the cliff face.
Will you embrace the uncertainty of the next level? Of gathering proof for your ideas & ambition? Will you embrace the hard sell but do everything in your power to move the product?
Or will you settle for the low hanging fruit?
The ABC’s of Self-Worth: W is for Worth
This post is part of the Blog Crawl of Self-Love, hosted by Molly Mahar of Stratejoy. She believes in the transformational power of truly adoring ourselves and so do I. Find out more about The ABC’s of Self Love Blog Crawl + Treasure Hunt here.
I like making money. Even more, I like helping others make money.
I’ve been accused of equating net worth with self-worth. But I don’t.
Your self-worth isn’t a number. Your earning potential doesn’t indicate your living potential.
But since transforming my minimum wage mindset into a 6-figure business, I’ve learned one thing: it’s impossible to “earn what you’re worth” until you know your own self-worth. Not in terms of numbers, naturally, but in terms of the value you bring to your inner & outer world.
Yes, I believe that we’re born with inherent worth as human beings. But there is also something to be said for identifying the unique traits and talents that make up your ability to contribute to something larger than yourself, your immanent value.
Before I started my business, my own self-worth had been beaten down. The corporation I worked for didn’t value my contribution. I had very few meaningful personal relationships. I was disconnected from my creativity and my own genius.
Intellectually, I knew I was worth something. Practically, I didn’t have the foggiest clue why.
When it came to understanding how I could contribute to society – and my own bottom line – through a business, it was rough. When you lack self-worth, it’s near impossible to name the value you can deliver to a customer, client, or employer.
Little by little, project by project, job by job, I started to see my contribution for what it was. Valuable. Extremely valuable.
But it was the work – not the price tag – that told me that. It was the results I created. It was the ease & relief I brought to my clients.
It was my unique contribution to each relationship that reinforced a growing self-worth. It was the investment of energy, time, and risk that allowed me to get back in touch with my own value as an individual.
As time went on, I could easily name those traits and talents. I became in tune with my immanent value.
And that – and only that – was what allowed me to catapult my earnings well past the my own self-imagined ceiling. Knowing my self-worth made earning more, taking risks, and asking for the true value of the work that I delivered the default.
No, your self-worth is not a number. The number on your paycheck or your hourly rate doesn’t determine how important you are.
But uncovering & reconnecting with the value you already possess – and exercising that value – is the quickest route to earning more than you’ve ever dreamed.
Go Back to the Start: How Chipotle is Redefining the Fast Food Market — and what you can learn!
When you think fast food, you think McDonald’s, Burger King, and, maybe, Wendy’s. If you want to get “ethnic,” you might throw in Taco Bell.
Try as they might, these companies can’t get you to equate eating fast food with eating healthy. You go to them for two reasons: cost & convenience. And maybe you don’t go to them at all.
And that’s just my gut.
Using my amazing powers of deduction, I would guess that there’s a larger percentage than average of people reading this blog who just wouldn’t go to a fast food joint for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You’re not in that market. You’re not a customer. You drive by not through.
Fast food has a bad reputation.
The fast food market is fairly finite. While new McEaters are born every day, the group of people willing to eat that food remains basically the same. New people aren’t being “converted” to fast food every day. Those that are do so out of necessity not out of choice.
That means, to grow profits, companies like McDonald’s and Wendy’s have to vie for a bigger piece of the pie. They choose a specific segment and they go after it. They release a new product to court a new segment of customers. They pick up a few more crumbs.
Hey, I thought this was about Chipotle?
Right. So Chipotle comes along. It’s fast food. Straight up. Unless it’s horribly busy, I can get my food in a Chipotle faster than I can at Wendy’s.
Here’s the difference: I choose to eat at Chipotle.
Why? It tastes good, first & foremost. Second, it’s real food.
Did you see this commercial during the Grammys? I couldn’t believe my eyes. That could not have been a cheap ad spot.
Cultivate a better world, says Chipotle. I buy it. Their meats are sustainably raised. They use as much organic produce as possible. It’s a story and an idea I’m willing to buy over & over again.
Chipotle entered the fast food market but it didn’t allow the fast food market to define it. Instead, it generated value (environmental sustainability, health consciousness, deliciousness) that brought a whole new customer base into the fast food market.
What does that kind of growth look like? With 1230 US stores: “Chipotle stock is up 50 percent on the year and over 500 percent over five years, far outperforming the market as a whole or the restaurant sector in particular. They announced last week that revenue grew 23.7 percent in 2011, with an 11 percent increase in same-store revenues. Restaurant operating margins are more than 25 percent,” according to Slate.com.
Those aren’t numbers to sneeze at.
Chipotle has taken a strong stance (anti-factory farming, for one), doubled-down on constraints (1 menu, few choices), and upped the ante by consistently delivering great tasting food. In doing so, they’ve created a legion of new-to-the-market fiercely loyal fans.
Principled choices lead to massive profit.
So the question to you is:
Have you backed down from principled choices because you fear the wrath of the existing market?
Are you allowing your competitors to write the rules of the game? Or are you writing your own?
Are you afraid that stating your beliefs and injecting them into every aspect of your business will turn customers away?
Are you simply following the standard strategy? Or are you generating new value through purpose-driven choices that attract new customers to you & your business alone?
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Only a few days remain to get in on The Art of Earning LIVE Virtual Ticket! Build a business on your principled choices, creating value for you & those you serve. Get all the info here.
No more excuses: claim your work.
When I decided to never return to my job at a now bankrupt bookstore chain, I did so because I never wanted to settle for using any less than my full potential.
When I decided to quit courting advertisers, give up on web design, and stop playing the business-as-usual game, I did so because I never wanted to settle for engaging any less than my full genius.
I want work that is fueled by the full extent of my capabilities. I want to make money – beautifully – by serving people with all of my personal brilliance.
I had to build a thriving business to do that.
That’s what I wake up to every day.
Why don’t you?
You assume your brilliance isn’t worth much. You assume what you have is nothing people will ever pay for.
You assume that your ideas are a dime a dozen. You assume that the people who “get it” are hard to reach.
Worst of all, you assume you need to build some other kind of business before you can unleash your full genius to the world.
Your assumptions are wrong.
The tools aren’t the problem. The access isn’t the problem. The economy isn’t the problem. The problem is that you assume this is hard — scary, even. You have been – to this point, today – unwilling to apply ease & integrity as a framework for building the business of your dreams.
Holding on to the assumptions that keep you from building that business means others are losing out on your work. Your genius. Your ideas. Your perspective. Your vision.
You are out of excuses. What do you have to lose by claiming the work that will make your heart sing & your world a better place?
Claim it.
Over 50 entrepreneurs – just like you – are busting these assumptions and writing a plan to grow their businesses on their own terms & in service of people they love. Grab a virtual ticket to The Art of Earning LIVE and join them.
Bake a Bigger Pie: What social media has to teach about You Economy business – or – Top Ten lists be damned!
My social media consumption is at an all time low. At best, Twitter & Facebook are boring. At worst, they’re perpetuating the model of business that got us in this economic mess to begin with.
All I see is formula headline after formula headline, 6 ways for this and 3 tricks for that. They all promise big returns. They are almost (and I’m only saying that to be nice) all fluff.
The bits of brilliance are few & far between. But they’re enough to keep me around.
Radiant self-promotion doesn’t bother me. Scrambling for a just-slightly-bigger piece of the pie does.
Let me explain.
It’s not that organizing information in an easy-to-read way is bad. I could do a better job of that myself. It’s not that writing clever headlines is bad. It’s not.
What is unfortunate is that this trend means solopreneurs are simply resorting to what corporations have been doing for years, going after their competitors instead of bringing more customers & value into the market.
“Now hold up!” you might say. “How is a formula blog post going after a competitor?”
Excellent question. You don’t have to slam a competitor or blatantly try to steal traffic, sales, or customer loyalty to be playing the competitive advantage game.
Competitive advantage is the name of the Them Economy game.
They try to eek out a percentage point here, pennies on the dollar there. Sure, it works. But for how long? They see the market as finite. There are only so many eyeballs — better optimize my business to attract the highest percentage.
They are going for a slice of the lifestyle design pie, the handmade marketplace pie, the travel hacking pie, the minimalist pie, the app pie, the self-publishing pie. They’re not bringing new customers into the fold. They’re not offering new ideas or fresh perspective.
They parrot others ideas in the hope that speaking the same words will yield the same results.
They show up in your Twitter stream to claim what’s theirs.
They see innovation at an end. Sure, the chips get smaller & the resolution gets brighter — but new? Nope, not right now. They don’t see new ideas around every corner, new opportunities for advancement just over every horizon.
They are more concerned with their social media strategy than they are with making your life better, easier, healthier, more connected, or more meaningful.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to buy it.
And we don’t have to rely on carving out a bigger piece of the pie for ourselves at the expense of others.
You Economy businesses know that the market is infinite. Click to spread the word! It is only limited by their ability to invite customers to the table.
You Economy businesses know that it’s not a matter of capturing a piece of what already exists but about creating something new, uniquely you, and in service of others. Baking a bigger pie leads to the greatest success.
You Economy businesses create welcoming spaces that use meaning, relationship, and experience to provide multidimensional value to a wider audience. They propose new ideas and invite others to participate in making them whole. They connect people to ambitions greater than any individual company or person could hold for themselves.
And yes, you can do this 140 characters at a time. Try it.
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Want to learn how to craft a business that gives back more than it takes while leaving you wealthier than you could ever imagine? That’s what I’m teaching at The Art of Earning LIVE. Grab your virtual ticket today.
The Anthropreneur Angle: delivering a good life through other-focused business culture
A good life is one rich in, above all, “human potential,” the capacity to seed, nurture, and harvest all the many different kinds of wealth.
— Umair Haque, Betterness
Building your own business on your strengths, passion, and self-determination goes a long way towards generating wealth on many levels.
You’ll find your reserves of creativity rising, your relationship accounts overflowing, and your energy reports firmly in the black. Raking in a nice profit doesn’t hurt, either.
This is old news.
You Economy businesses must not only support their owners but support others.
This is not as simple as “do no harm.”
It means working in a way that leaves your commercial ecosystems qualitatively & quantifiably better. As Haque describes it in his book, Betterness, it’s a positive paradigm of economy – not simply a “not negative” one.
The positive economic paradigm isn’t just based in the trade of financial assets but the growth of real wealth in all its forms.
In this system, your business thrives because you’re not just solving problems for your customers but helping them live richer lives. Your business doesn’t make life “not bad” it makes life better.
You know your business can make your life richer in many forms: relationally, creatively, financially, intellectually, emotionally, etc.. But have you designed it to make your customer’s lives better in all those ways as well?
Do you make business decisions with the intention of making your customers richer?
I don’t doubt that some of you already do this. However, in striving to make our businesses work “better,” we often crack open the annals of Them Economy business. We assume the answer lies in the dots that remain unconnected in our non-MBA-trained brains. We assume the answer is hiding in more persuasive marketing copy, finely tuned profit & loss statements, and better launch strategy.
But you are not just another cog in the Them Economy machine.
I love persuasive marketing copy, finely tuned P&L statements, and rocking launch strategies, but the basis & understanding for those facets of business must now arise from an other-focused culture. Your overall business culture must emerge from a focus on generating multidimensional wealth for those you come in contact with.
What is business culture?
Your business culture (and yes, you have one!) is the point-of-view & values that make up all business decisions, communication, and development.
“The thing is, every business has a culture. It may be strong or weak, positive or negative, or just plain hard to spot, but it’s like a form of internal brand in a way. It’s the collective impression, habits, language, style, communication and practices of the organization.
— John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing”
You’re not an entrepreneur, you’re an anthropreneur.
An anthropreneur is part of & is creating a commercial culture that serves human beings to their full potential. The language, habitat, rituals, and beliefs of service & those you serve are at the center of your business culture. As an anthropreneur, you are concerned with building wealth into every facet of life – beyond mere profit – both yours & your customers’.
This is why you find the usual answers to business questions lacking. It’s not that those answers are wrong. It’s that in a different time, a different economy, a different culture, you could start with those answers & build from there.
In the You Economy, you must start with your other-focused culture. You must start with the intention to build wealth on all levels for all parties involved. You must know what that looks like, feels like, tastes like. And then you can layer the business-as-usual answers on top of that context. You can evaluate them. You can mold them & manipulate them to work for your business culture.
Consider social media. No, really.
I am a lover of social media. Both for what it has allowed me to access in commerce & for what it has allowed me to communicate to a mass audience. But I’m not a “how to” social media strategist. I’m a user. And maybe a bit of a philosopher.
But social media is an acute & accessible example of the generating multidimensional forms of wealth.
The gurus will tell you how often to tweet, when to post updates, and what types of headlines will generate the most response. That’s fine. There’s even research to prove it, which I highly recommend reading.
You can construct tweets & updates that have no purpose, no greater message, no call to action. They’ll get retweeted. But does that give your business traction? Is anyone really paying attention? Or is it simply part of a paradigm that rewards competitive behavior? I, of course, would argue the latter.
Instead, starting a movement around a single ideal – even for entertainment, internet memes, FTW! – encourages others to build on the conversation. Develop a #hashtag around something you’re passionate about, use it, and watch others add their own emotional & intellectual wealth to the conversation.
Your output is valuable, sure. But the spontaneous conversation created around your output is exponentially more valuable. If that conversation is tied to a business and you leverage it for sales, your financial wealth increases. If that conversation is tied to a nonprofit and you leverage it for action, social wealth increases. There is greater value for you, your customers & compatriots, and those you all touch in the shared wealth than there is in the value of a single source output.
What I’m not suggesting is that we build other-focused cultures at the expense of profit. Sometimes, these cultures will impact profitability – or our ability to squeeze every last cent out of the business model. Businesses & anthropreneurs should be encouraged to profit – lots of it – as one simple indicator of the wealth they are building into the system.
Responsibility to generating all forms of wealth doesn’t negate your responsibility to generate a profit. And it will probably help.
Yes, building your own business is a big step towards you living a better, more fulfilled life. But to get there in the You Economy, you must begin with making the lives of others better. Unleash their human potential – they’ll help you unleash yours.
What’s your anthropreneur angle?
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