Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
In a crisis or quandary, my default mode is isolation. No matter the problem, I’ll opt to try to solve it myself before involving others. I would rather brood than ask for help.
I will think and think about possible solutions until I’ve come up with a solid plan. Then, and only then, will I tell someone else what the issue is and how I’m going to fix it.
I trick myself into thinking that this “strategy” is about being well-prepared, as opposed to a coping mechanism for being scared, confused, or worried.
Luckily, I’ve learned this is not a helpful strategy. And, I’ve figured out that it’s not about being well-prepared; it’s about not being courageous enough to ask for help.
I’ve also recognized that this coping mechanism often bleeds over into decisions about opportunities, too. In default mode, I spot an opportunity and ponder it until I’m ready to act on it.
Either way, I miss out.
As much as I’d like to think otherwise, I do not always have the right ideas. I do not always have the most experience. And I do not always see all the possibilities in front of me.
In default mode—isolated from those who could really help—I’m blind to everything but my own narrow perspective.
And I’m really good. But I’m not that good.
If your response to a problem, opportunity, or idea is to go to your thinking spot and think until you have a plan before you loop anyone else in on what’s going on, your default mode is isolation too. And, just like me, you’re prone to missing out on great ideas, even better opportunities, and innovative solutions.
Isolation is a fast track to failure.
Of course, your default mode is not the only operating mode you have. You can choose to do things differently, to seek out help when you need it most and often when you don’t.
Change your operating mode to “community & collaboration.”
Your business community—the people who support you, cheer you on, challenge your conventional thinking—allows you to see your blind spots. Seeing your blind spots is the first step to avoiding a collision.
Your community also helps you detour around traffic. They can show you the most congested parts of path to your intended destination and give you a new route. You get there faster and with less anxiety.
And best of all, your business community can help you see how to connect all the dots to where you want to get. Running a business is like renting a car in a town you’ve never been to. You know where you’re at (hopefully!) and you know where you want to go, but you have no idea to navigate there. Others have been there, they’re accustomed to the roads in the area. Your community is your personal GPS device.
Over the last few years, I’ve made a real commitment to not living or working in isolation and engaging a business community to support me. I’ve made small changes like always looping in my partner on questions I have about my business. And I’ve made much bigger changes like opening my team to people who aren’t looking for direction so much as they’re looking to make a contribution.
Whether you’re looking to hire or whether you just need a fresh perspective, you need to be proactive in involving others in your business.
That could mean posting on a Facebook group that’s full of people you respect and trust.
It could mean joining a business association where everyone is working for the success of other members (btw, you can get a free 30-day trial of ours).
It could mean joining a group business coaching program like Quiet Power Strategy™, making a biweekly Skype date with a colleague, forming an accountability group, or having a weekly local business owner meet up.
Next time you feel yourself going into isolation mode, change the setting.
Look for help. Ask for an opinion. Bounce an idea.
Situate yourself in a community and take advantage of it.
Your thinking spot will still be there when you get back.
Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
Vision plus hustle doesn’t equal results.
Every day I see business owners with lofty visions and hardcore hustle fail to get traction and reach their goals. They’ve got big ideas and aspirations and they’re putting in lots of hours, but growth is stalled.
If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. This problem is something that micro, small, large, and even enterprise businesses run into.
Nilofer Merchant, in her book The New How, defines this problems as an “Air Sandwich.” She writes:
An Air Sandwich is, in effect, a strategy that has clear vision and future direction on the top layer, day-to-day action on the bottom, and virtually nothing in the middle — no meaty key decisions that connect the two layers, no rich chewy center filling to align the new direction with new actions within the company.
In your business, this likely manifests as feeling out of touch exactly how your hustle translates into results. You feel a little (or a lot) fuzzy about what you should be focusing on and what really counts. You spend quite a bit of time seeing what “works” but what works doesn’t seem replicable, sustainable, or capable of building true momentum.
To solve your sandwich problem, you need to commit.
Strategy, as I explain in my newest book, is all about making decisions. And decisions require you to say “yes” to one thing, and “no” to something else. They require you to commit to a direction and plan of action.
Between vision and hustle are the strategic decisions you make about What You Want to Create and How You Want to Connect with customers. These are things you try willy nilly, they’re things you commit to, lean in to. They guide your day-to-day action and bring your business closer to its goals.
If you’re feeling like your business has a sandwich problem, ask yourself where you’ve been avoiding commitment.
Where are your opportunities to make key decisions about how to reach your goals, not just what you need to do on a daily basis to stay afloat?
And what’s been keeping you from making a commitment to a more productive direction?
Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
2014 was a year of extraordinary growth for my business. I made investment a priority and still came out with considerably more personal income than ever before. The business more than doubled in revenue from 2013 to 2014 and we blasted through 2 mental thresholds that even two years ago would have seemed quite audacious to me.
Of course, while money is an excellent metric, it’s not the money that really matters. What really matters is that my business grew because I was willing to make some changes that allowed me—and later my team—to be more effective. Those changes were a result of getting even clearer on our Quiet Power Strategy and me embracing my own self-leadership and the leadership of my business.
Those changes also reflect some things that others might see as “shouldn’ts.” Shouldn’ts are the things that you’ve either been explicitly told you shouldn’t do or the opposite of the things you assume you should do. The thing is, I don’t believe in shoulds.
I believe everything in business is a choice.
When you cede your choices to shoulds, you give up part of your Quiet Power as a business owner.
Making unique choices that are true to your personal effectiveness makes you more powerful.
Let me tell you some of the things I “shouldn’t” have done in my business that actually lead to this extraordinary growth:
1) I stopped offering one-on-one coaching.
One-on-one coaching served me well. I was able to hone my methodology, develop relationships with amazing business owners, and make good money doing it. Yet, it wasn’t a sustainable direction for me.
I didn’t just make the switch because it’s “easier” to make money coaching groups than coaching individuals. If you’ve ever tried it, you probably realize that’s a bit of a fallacy. There’s nothing easy about selling 15 spots at once instead of 1.
I made the switch because it didn’t serve my long-term vision. My vision has always been and continues to be one where my business generates revenue based on my ideas, not on my service. I need time to think, connect, and develop. One-on-one coaching doesn’t serve that plan.
I could easily sell time with me for top dollar but it won’t serve me in the long-term and it wouldn’t lead to the kind of growth that we saw this last year.
2) I said no to major list-building activities.
Well, 2014 was the year we hit peak telesummit. The idea of the telesummit is that you gather a whole bunch of great people together and put on a virtual conference of sorts. In theory, I love this idea. In practice, I hate it.
Here’s why: somewhere along the line, people realized that just because you have “celebrities” in your telesummit doesn’t mean you’ll create a huge draw. So marketers started insisting that if they include you, you have to email your list about the summit. Required promotion just isn’t my bag.
My subscriber community (you!) is way too important to me to drop “solo blasts” every time I get interviewed. I still did many great telesummits this year (like the Thriving Artist Summit and the Conquer Summit) but said “no” to any summit that required my promotion to participate.
That way, you know that if I share something with you, it’s because I believe wholeheartedly in it, not because I’m required to share it with you.
3) I gave away some of my best content for free.
Plenty of content marketers will tell you that they’re giving away their best stuff for free. Some of that is true. Some of it isn’t. Here’s what I can tell you about what I did:
I went on CreativeLive 3 times over 10 months and gave away large chunks of my best programs.
You know what happened? My subscriber community grew by leaps and bounds, my membership community grew by 80% (and $1000s per month), and more people bought my highest investment program at that time.
It’s not enough to tell people you can help them. Sometimes, you have to show them that what you’ve got for them is truly different.
4) I launched a new program with no fanfare or marketing.
Last summer, I followed through on a plan I’d had in the works for almost 3 years: I created a business coach training program. Then, I filled it with no fanfare or marketing. I simply said (in 1 Facebook post, no less), “I made this. Are you interested?”
Over 60 people responded that they wanted information. I interviewed over 15 candidates for 6 spots. I took on 4 more people than I originally wanted to. In September, there were 8 brand new business coaches who were armed to the teeth with effective tools and coaching strategies.
And that leads me to point number 5.
5) I trained people to do exactly what I do.
One of the biggest shoulds you’ll hear is that you should make money doing what you’re uniquely able to do. It’s “you” that’s valuable.
That’s crap.
Do you really believe you can create a business that sets you free if you are chained to what’s valuable about your business? No. You don’t believe that. Not really.
Training people to do exactly what I do is key to creating exponentially value in the world. And when I create exponentially more value, I can reap exponentially more rewards.
Besides, I truly want you to believe that you can do what I do. I don’t want to be your crutch, I want to be the person who empowers you to find your own path. That’s what Quiet Power Strategy is all about. You might need a hand to find your business’s Quiet Power Strategy but you should be able to lead yourself over time.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or discouraged about what’s on the docket for your business this year, I encourage you to consider which of those things you’ve proactively made the choice to pursue and which are on your plan because they’re shoulds. Examine your course of action on a daily basis to remove the shoulds and embrace the shouldn’ts that work for you.
Art of Growth
Did you hear Taylor Swift pulled all her music from Spotify? (Bet you never thought I’d start a post with a Taylor Swift reference…)
It turns out that, if the industry’s projections are correct, Swift’s new album, 1989, will be the only album to sell over 1 million copies this year. Compare that to over 100 albums that were released and certified platinum in 2004—just ten years ago.
For my own part, in my former life as a Borders Books & Music manager, I remember when music sales made up a solid part of our bottom line (also 2004 for anyone who’s keeping track). Then I remember music becoming a pretty low priority in terms of sales, marketing, and merchandising. Finally, I remember when we stopped. selling. music.
I can’t tell you when I bought my last CD but I’m sure it was while I was still working for Borders and probably well before I left the company in 2008. But the point of this post isn’t to bemoan that no one buys music anymore. I love watching giant industries evolve and adapt—even if the music industry is one that’s done it incredibly poorly.
The point of my post is this: big artists just aren’t as big as they used to be.
And yet, there are still plenty of successful people making an impact with their music, creating work for legions of loyal fans, and living the lifestyles they dreamed about as kids.
Taylor Swift might just be the last success story of the traditional “get big” machine. It’s just not how the industry works anymore. Bands who know what’s good for them don’t wait around to get picked by some A&R guy from a big name label. They make their success happen organically.
They play shows in people’s living rooms, they develop connections with promoters, they find fun new ways to engage with their budding fan base. And they do it all little bit by little bit, putting the emphasis on the work & the fans, not on the waiting.
The good news is that plenty of musicians are still making a living from music. They’re just doing it in different, more creative ways.
Now, what does this have to do with your business? I wonder how long you’ve waited to have your big idea picked up by someone with the clout, connections, and audience to help you make it big. I wonder how long you’ve sat on a great idea because you wanted to take it to the big time instead of starting small. I wonder how long you’ve told yourself that your business model would work when you got big instead of figuring out an abundant model for being successful at a smaller size.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not “anti-big.” I’m very, very pro-big. But I have also seen time & time again how big starts much smaller than we want to believe. We want to believe that someone will pick us. We want to believe that our big break is just around the corner.
But more times than not, the brands that are big today were functioning at a much smaller size just a few years ago.
It’s not a matter of putting in your time, it’s a matter of putting your work in the hands of people who help you get better, bigger, and more abundant to facilitate your growth. And those people aren’t taste-makers, they’re customers.
If that sounds like the right strategy for your business, I want to invite you to join me for The Living Room Strategy. It’s a bootcamp on taking your idea to market in a creative way that starts making an impact and putting money in your pocket… now, not later.
Click here to find out more and to register.
Art of Growth
Well, we did it. We’re on the happy side of our biggest launch yet. While I’m happy to give you a tactical break down of everything we did—and didn’t do—the most important parts of this launch were the fears, goals, and barriers to success that I conquered as the leader of this business.
1) Conquered organizing a team and letting them do the work.
With the way I planned the marketing around this launch, I had a lot on my proverbial plate. I did a CreativeLive workshop (on launching, no less) just 2 weeks before this launch. That meant that I needed to both do the content for that course and the marketing plan. I needed to send at least weekly emails from June through August—a period of time I normally sit back and relax my way through.
The only way I could pull this off was to rely on other people. First, I relied on the perennially awesome team at CreativeLive, including my content producer, Michael Karsh. Second, I hired Breanne Dyck to help me plan instructional activities that would make this my best workshop yet. Finally, I hired a project manager—my mom, no less—who set up all my tasks and to-dos in Evernote using Natasha Vorompiova’s Evernote for Small Business system.
Don’t worry. There will be more on hiring my mom and a full review of Natasha’s program very soon.
I also hired Claire Pelletreau to manage a Facebook ad campaign and relied on Brigitte and Megan even more than usual to support the business.
More than ever before, I got to show up and only supply brilliance—never mediocrity. Why put mediocrity into my business when I can hire others for their brilliance?
2) Conquered not believing I’m a special snowflake.
Believe it or not, I don’t believe that you’re the only person who can do what you do. And I don’t believe that very common mantra is a very good foundation for starting a business. This summer, I trained 8 women on how to use my methodology and had a very difficult time choosing 3 of them to coach 10ThousandFeet with me.
I’ll be taking new apprentices in early 2015. So look for that.
I couldn’t have grown this program to where it is without getting help on the delivery of the program. For me, that wasn’t about inviting in other experts to teach. The value of the program has always been in that it’s a bottom-up coaching program, not a top-down course.
Just a few days into the program, Jen Vertanen, Natasha Vorompiova, and Suzi Istvan are already laying down serious insight and wisdom for our participants.
Which leads me to number 3…
3) Conquered the 3rd role of the E-Myth narrative: manager.
The E-Myth (a sacred text among creative and lifestyle entrepreneurs) defines 3 roles that every small business owner has from time to time: technician, entrepreneur, and manager. The entrepreneur’s role is the one that comes most easily to my INTP personality. I’m happy to think big, conceptual thoughts, I’m happy to design my own systems, and I’m happy to move fast and break things.
It’s always been easiest to generate revenue (at little cost) by also being the technician and actively delivering the services that my business offers.
But the role of manager has seemed less than attractive or well-suited to me.
This was a bad assumption, however. I’m actually a great manager but, without the space and flexibility to manage my business and team the way I like, it felt extremely stressful. Now that 10ThousandFeet is handled on the logistical side by a customer support person, a project manager, and 3 coaches—in addition to Brigitte and myself—I am able to step into the role of manager and create a much better experience for everyone involved.
Which has actually put me at greater ease over the last few weeks, even as I step away from being the technician and the entrepreneur for a time.
What do you need to conquer?
We all have assumptions, modus operandi, and ruts that keep us from realizing the next level of success. Consider what assumptions you’ve been working under and how they are impacting your business and its opportunities for growth.
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Speaking of what you need to conquer, I’m also thrilled to tell you that I’m a featured expert in Natalie MacNeil’s Conquer Summit. It’s a completely free course (valued at $999) designed to help you build a foundation for your business that gives you more confidence, clarity, and cash.
I really love what Natalie has done with this program and all the high-quality effort they put into the program. You can sign-up—FREE—right here.
Art of Growth
One of the Quiet Power Strategies that I shared on CreativeLive a few weeks ago was: Know where you’re headed.
Are you playing a game of leap frog from good idea to good idea without knowing exactly where you’re going to land in the end?
If you are, you’re not alone.
I’ve talked to a lot of business owners lately, everywhere from San Francisco to Philadelphia to right here in Astoria, and I’ve heard that same story. You’re building a business, you’re crafting great offers, you’re even putting together good marketing campaigns.
But to what end?
Until you know where you’re headed, you can’t create a plan.
And what’s more, you end up reinventing the wheel each time you embark on a new project.
When I work with clients, my goal is to help them establish the single thing they’re driving toward overall. It’s that spark of motivation that can lead to an inferno of action. It’s focus. And it’s quite powerful.
We call that their Chief Initiative.
Do you know what your Chief Initiative is? It’s the one goal that is the destination for all the navigational decisions you need to make in the next year.
- Release your new product?
- Get a book deal?
- Bring on a business partner?
- Attend your first wholesale show?
- Do a quarter-million in revenue?
Everything else you do in your business revolves around that one goal. You build other goals, systems for growth, marketing campaigns, product development, team-building moves–everything–around that one goal.
Because then you know WHY.
You know where you’re headed.
And you can lead your business that direction.
Knowing where you’re headed is the biggest shift you can make between being reactive and being proactive.
And being proactive instead of reactive can make a huge difference in your energy level, creative capacity, and confidence in your business.
Instead of feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat.
Do you like how many metaphors I’ve squeezed into this blog post?
If you’re ready to feel more in the driver’s seat of your business–and reclaim your energy level, creative capacity, and confidence, choose a Chief Initiative to serve you the next 12 months and focus all your activity on reaching that goal.
And if you want support on choosing that goal and creating the systems that serve it, I invite you to join us in 10ThousandFeet this Fall. We’ve got 5 spots left and I don’t expect them to last long.
Click here to learn more and apply.
