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.
Quiet Power Strategy
There are fewer gatekeepers, permission-givers, and clear paths to success than at any other time in history. You can’t rely on anyone else to tap you on the should and say, “Step forward. This is your time.”
If you won’t do it for yourself, no one is going to do it for you.
Yet, the options can be overwhelming. While there are fewer gatekeepers and permission-givers, there are many more ways to create your own livelihood. There are almost an infinite number of ways to take your idea to market, communicate with the people who need it most, and partner with others to reach your goals.
Self-leadership is your path out of the overwhelm. It’s your personalized approach to realizing your ideas in a business that brings you the wealth, peace, and ease you really want.
Self-leadership isn’t just about what you want to do—it’s about how you want to do it. You get to decide where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there. Self-leadership is the key to creating a framework that has you relying more on yourself than on gurus or can’t lose formulas.
Self-leadership also isn’t about being more productive—it’s about being more effective. You don’t have to do or produce more. Instead, you need to make what you’re doing or producing really count. The best way to do that is to work what’s true for you and how you really want to connect with people into everything you do. Position your work in a way that’s aligned with the way you show up naturally and you’ll find traction and efficacy less fleeting.
- Prefer not to connect with large groups of people? Focus on careful, intentional, one-to-one relationship-building.
- Don’t like the hassle of big launches and look-at-me marketing? Choose to nurture a high-touch business based on a strong referral engine.
- Love connecting with an audience from the stage? Figure out ways to get in front of event organizers and build your platform.
The choice–and the power–is yours.
Effective self-leaders are able to avoid self-defeating beliefs, leverage their points of power, and collaborate with others—resulting in goal achievement, independence, and the ability to lead others more effectively.
— Ken Blanchard
To become a better self-leader and decision-maker for your business, you need to hone 3 key skills: perception, discernment, and focus. In the old economy, most of us outsourced these skills. We relied on others to tell us what was going on in our world, we sought plans and formulas from people who knew better than us, and we waited for management to tell us what to put our attention on.
Now, there are both fewer ways to outsource these skills and many more opportunities to take control for yourself. But now that you have control, what are you going to do with it? You can control yourself into a hole in the ground or you can lead yourself where you want to go. You can get bogged down in busywork or you can devise creative plans and watch them work. You can force yourself to struggle through the conventional way or decide to blaze your own path.
You can use perception, discernment, and focus to find your own way. When you hone your perception, you see, hear, feel, and sense more of what is going on around you. You have more information to work with. You’ll feel better prepared and more out-in-front of the market. When you refine your skill of discernment, you use the information at your disposal to get closer to your own goals. You see opportunities for creativity instead of simple choices. When you sharpen your focus, you only spend time doing work that counts. You know what’s going to push the needle and you concentrate on those things.
Using those skills, you can rely less on outside direction and more on your own self-leadership. You can take advantage of all the opportunities the New Economy affords you without getting stuck in the weeds. Tapping into your own self-leadership makes you more powerful, quietly. When you’re more effective, more focused, more perceptive and aligned with the market, you exude authority. And that’s intoxicating.
If you’re in the position of needing to convince others to trust you, to cultivate a sense of community and belonging, and to present yourself as powerful—and we all are, invest yourself in becoming a keen self-leader.
Quiet Power Strategy
It still happens to me.
I get a new email. It’s from someone “important.” Maybe it’s the client I’ve been wanting to land but never hoped of getting. Maybe it’s someone I really admire who’s looking for some advice. Maybe it’s a big company who’s doing cool stuff that wants to showcase my work.
I get excited.
Then I open it, read it, and proceed to panic.
That panic–and all the nagging negative voices that accompany it–that’s the Impostor Complex.
I can’t tell you how many great business opportunities I’ve missed out on due to the Complex.
And while it does still happen, I am now more skilled at recognizing the signs, implementing the tools I have, and moving forward. I’ve identified 5 ways that Impostor Complex has reared its ugly head in my own business and the businesses I work with on a regular basis.
Which sounds the most familiar to you?
1) You don’t ask for the help you need.
If you were good enough, smart enough, or talented enough, you wouldn’t need help, right? Asking for help is like admitting that the nagging voice in your head is correct. Oh boy, have I felt that before.
But it’s just not true. I find confident, capable people are the very best at asking for help. Knowing what you need and asking for it is a sign you really mean business.
The times I’ve been able to beat back my own Impostor Complex have been the times that I felt best about asking for help—and received the most help, as well. When you ask for help, you’re not signaling to anyone that you’re incapable. You’re owning the fact that great things require the support of a team.
When you ask for help, you get the support and feedback you need to create real growth in your business. You’re not a one (wo)man-shop, no matter how hard you try to be. Think proactively about building a team of support through your asks.
2) You don’t share what you’re doing with influencers (the media, potential mentors, etc…).
There are whole media outlets devoted to the news of companies that haven’t produced a single product yet. But when it comes to sharing your work of brilliance, you bristle.
Been there, done that. I’ve had the experience of having many people I admire tell me to let them know when I put out something new or ask how they can help promote my work. In the past, I never took them up on it.
I told myself I was waiting for something worthy of their attention. I was waiting to be worthy of their attention, regardless of the fact that I already was.
When I stopped waiting and started sharing, wonderful things happened. Testimonials came in. Programs got shared. Connections were made.
Every business needs influencers to help it spread its message. Whether it’s a big-time blogger, a magazine, a TV show, or a mover & shaker in your industry those stamps of approval help you get from one level to the next. And getting that approval is completely within your control.
3) You play small with your product development.
I’m all for iteration and bit-by-bit development. But what I see all to often is business owners playing small with their ideas. They’re following patterns that others have established because their Impostor Complex keeps them from imagining anything else.
I did this for years. I released tiny product after tiny product, burning myself out on launches and promotion. Once I was able to beat back Impostor Complex, I could create a business model that allowed for a bigger vision of what my business could become. I created a community that became a receptacle for my creative drive. I created a coaching program that is the foundation of a certification program.
Your ideas deserve to come to their full fruition and your business growth depends on it.
Which leads me to the next point.
4) You don’t plan ahead.
When you think of yourself as a fraud, you can’t plan very far ahead. If every day is just another chance for someone to call you out on your ability, why consider what your business will look like 12 or 24 months down the line?
In the years I listened to that awful nagging voice, I was only trying to stay afloat. I’d plan out the next 3 months of my business, max. That meant I was constantly reinventing the wheel instead of working on the systems that would support my longevity. It was a frustrating and exhausting place to be.
Planning ahead lets you stack success upon success. And it also lessens the pain of failures or mistakes when they inevitably happen. You owe it to your future self and your future business to plan ahead now.
5) You don’t communicate regularly with your community.
The last thing… and maybe the most simple, is that you don’t communicate regularly with your community when your Impostor Complex is telling you that you have nothing useful, entertaining, or profound to say.
This problem might be fairly simple but it’s devastating to your business. Business development is, at the heart of it, communication. It’s talking with your customers, your team, and others in your industry. If you’re not regularly in dialogue with your community, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to learn, sell, and grow.
This might take the form of not sending out emails (clearly, I don’t have a problem with that). It might take the form of not asking customers for feedback for fear you’ve failed them (you’re an impostor after all, aren’t you?). It might mean not showing up at industry events like conferences or meet ups (my own Impostor Complex has made networking difficult).
Regular communication is a key way to get the feedback you crave, the customers you need, and the praise that inspires you so that you can take steps forward in your business.
The Way Forward
Impostor Complex is not something you combat on your own. I’ve had a steady group of entrepreneur friends who’ve helped me, as well as a coach who specializes in beating back the Complex. That coach is Tanya Geisler, who has helped me reverse more internal scripts than I care to think about right now.
If you’re ready to beat back Impostor Complex so that you can surge ahead with your business, those are the two steps I recommend: get friends who support you in this and get a coach who can really keep you accountable to your progress.
Art of Growth, Quiet Power Strategy
I have often been teased for being brainy and intellectualizing personal problems. I tend to think more than feel. I rationalize more than empathize. I am INTP.
I have never gone so far as to try to hide my smarts but I certainly have often seen it as a weakness instead of a strength. Like it’s something to be managed instead of something to be exploited.
This week in Quiet Power Strategy™: The Program, our clients completed Quiet Power Inventories. These begin with understanding your Onlyness. Onlyness is a concept from Nilofer Merchant’s book, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, and she uses it to talk about the unique angle that each of us bring to the work that we do.
From my perspective, Onlyness also applies to brands–it’s a big part of where they draw their Quiet Power from. The most memorable brands get really good at using what makes them unique to deliver additional value to their customers. And this often means focusing on what has become a perceived weakness and turning it into a genuine asset.
Instead of hiding what could be the butt of jokes, great brands put it out in the open. They exploit it.
Merchant writes in a recent post:
Your brand is the exhaust created by the engine of your life. It is a by-product of what happens as you share what you are creating, and with whom you are creating.
So if your engine is running on something–no matter how quirky it might be–and that’s not a key piece of what you’re putting out into the world, what’s representing you, what’s acting as a channel for the value you’re creating, you’re missing a big opportunity.
Don’t try to engineer a brand. Reverse-engineer a brand (click to tweet!) that supports your unique way of creating value.
My brand leverages my habit of intellectualizing and rationalizing. It sets my brand apart from brands that leverage fun & glamor or spirituality & poeticism. But its these unique strengths that allow each of these brands to deliver more value than they would if they were traveling down the middle of the road. And they are each things that could be perceived as weaknesses if not blatantly built into the very core of each business.
There’s a perception that there are certain “right” ways to create a brand or build the persona of your business. Whether you’ve bought into an image that ultra-professional, glam, corporate, spiritual, new age, or quirky, if the image of your business doesn’t spring from what you’re bringing to the table through your business’s unique skills, strengths, and passions, the resulting disconnect can drain you dry. Financially and energetically.
Your Onlyness helps you build a business model that really works. It informs your sales copy, your company culture, and your sales process. But, bottom line, it helps you & your business do what it does best.
As I mentioned earlier, often that thing that businesses are trying to hide, manage, or battle is the key to infusing Onlyness into their brand, business model, and sales process. It’s the thing they assume is keeping them from doing more, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Stop fighting it, start leveraging it.
If you’ve be struggling with how to manage a certain aspect of your personality or something that your business doesn’t do as well as you think it should, what would happen if you decided to highlight it? Harness it?
If you have a particular weakness that’s been nagging you for awhile, my friend & client Bridget Pilloud does this for a living. She helped me recast my social anxiety as a strength–which I’ve sense incorporated into my work in a big way.
