A Wiser Girl and The Girl Effect
I remember a time at our dining room table. My dad was talking with his friends about politics. The women were quiet. My sisters and I were bored. One of the women spoke up and offered a different perspective. It woke me from my stupor. At 14 I knew an intelligent comment when I heard one and expected that she would get an intelligent reply. Instead, the men chuckled in a patronizing way, her husband patted her hand, and they continued the conversation as though she wasn’t even in the room.
My jaw clenched. My shoulders tightened. I determined that would never happen to me! At that moment I decided to learn how to speak out the way that men spoke so that I would be considered an equal. So I watched them furrow their brows, gesture strongly, lower their voices, look solemn and wise. I practiced in the mirror. Signed up for debate class at school. Joined the “legislation” club and made sure I developed good arguments.
While it wasn’t as much fun as more girly things it did accomplish what I wanted – I got respect. š
After rolling that routine out for years and years the tension in my shoulders, head, and jaw were unbearable. I wasn’t having as much fun as I wanted, either. Plus, my confidence wobbled all the time because I was faking it till I made it. My fears got the best of me. I was sure i would be “found out” any day.
Finally, I’d had enough of my play acting. I decided that my deep luscious, feminine really is wise and beautiful and…my friend!
Now I’ve empowered myself as a woman. As I give her a voice, move like a woman in my body, and I discover that she is powerful – filled with soft wise feminine power. I don’t feel drained at the end of the day anymore. Joy fills my being and my life, fountaining out into everything that I do.
What if Ā I’d seen strong opinionated women celebrated and welcomed when I was a girl? The possibilities are endless! How might my life have been different? Take a look at The Girl Effect video. Join me in loving the girl in you.
Check this out too – women all around the world are blogging about The Girl Effect video.
http://www.taramohr.com/girleffectposts/
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Finding and Securing Clients Business Coaching Blog
Do you offer a great product and give excellent customer service but you are stumped on locating clients who can afford your services?
Once you are in conversation with them, do you know how to āclose the dealā ā take them over the line into a signed agreement?
And then, do you keep them coming back for more ā approaching you again and again, referring you to friends, neighbors, business colleagues?
This is a tough stumbling block for many small business owners that I coach in The Wisdom Connection. While I list a couple of great tips here that work ā the bottom line is that you have to do this and more, each and every workday to build your client base and a reputation that gets you into momentum.
I know you know the basics: get your name out – both in your community through ads, school auctions or shows and by building your on-line presence through blogging, guest blogging and social media. In empowering businesswomen to grow their businesses, I repeat the following motto over and over: Go Slow to Go Fast. It feels slow to take all these steps! But, over time, the momentum will start to grow.
Here are a few ideas for finding and securingĀ clients. I listed more ideas on Maintaining clientsĀ in yesterday’s blog.Letās take your businesses to a whole new level this fall!
Finding Clients:
- Generate interest in your product or service. My basic rule of thumb? It takes 3 years of consistent work to get from start-up to real momentum. (Remember the business stages in the 2010 February SOAR! business coaching blog?) Once the basics are in place (financial systems, equipment, website, etc) then you enter the phase where itās 10 in for every 1 out (10 times for effort than reward). This is when most small business owners quit. Keep going! Concentrate your efforts on both Push and Pull. Push out information while you simultaneously pull new and returning clients towards you with invitations, opportunities, and a sense of fun/competency/adventure, etc.
- Qualify prospects. Focus your efforts on those who are ready for you. The process is called a pipeline ā like a funnel that starts broad and narrows down to focus on those who are ready for you. Make a spreadsheet or a hand written list. Use a rating continuum: Ready, Almost Ready, Someday, and Not Likely. Focus 80% of your attention on the Ready and Almost Ready. Cultivate the other two over time and watch for when they shift into the next category. Keep up your list and be creative to keep filling that pipeline!
- Maintain contact. Too often small business owners take the first ānoā as a final ānoā. Touch base, inquire how they are, wish them happy holidays, send an interesting article or other tidbits to build relationship and readiness. Do all of this without āsellingā but when they do indicate interest ā move to the next step without delay.
Securing Qualified Clients:
- Assess what they really need and want. Ā Ask caring yet insightful questions. I lost a large early consulting client because my colleague asked them questions about what they needed and wanted in the interview and I told them all about me and why I was qualified to help them. By the end of the one-hour interview they knew all about me and he knew all about them. They felt like he was already working with them so it was an easy slide into contracting.
- Show them how you can deliver what they need and want. Emphasize the benefits (not the features) of your work. Benefits are what they will receive, gain and experience. Features are the what ā the technical, professional qualities you bring. Send them a sample, invite them to ask you for more. Refer them to a satisfied client. Collect testimonials at the end of each sale and have them on your website and on the tip of your tongue. When you speak the words someone else used to describe your value it speaks louder than anything.
- Ask for the sale and close the deal. I canāt tell you how many small businesswomen donāt ask for the sale. Ask! āShall we set a date?ā āDo you want the full family or mostly the kids to start?ā āAre you ready to complete our agreement today? Iād love to help you start finding those matching shirts for the whole family.ā If they say no or not yet, find out why and identify a next step. āGreat, that makes sense to wait until you talk with your husband. Shall we talk again next week?ā
This process can be confusing for every small business owner. Plus, itās hard not to take it personally ā given that we are our business and the success of our business can feel like it reflects our personal worth. It sets up a tough inner dialogue that might sound like: āNo clients call ā Iām no good. Clients call ā I am good.ā Let it go and bring your focus and dedication back to the business.
If you lose confidence and stop or submerge yourself in the “safer” artistic process of photography? It is hard for new clients to find you! One of my mentors, Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup books, taught me through a story about his rise to success as an author. He and his partner collected every idea possible to get the book known. They posted each idea – covering the walls of his office with post-its. Each day they challenged themselves to take at least three actions for six months. Sometimes they did 6 radio shows in one day! It worked. Their first Chicken Soup book ended up #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List!!
Identify many actions to take, make a list, and steady but sure take at least one step each workday. Just keep at it! Remember my motto: Go Slow to Go Fast and you’ll get into real momentum. More information on building and maintaining your client base is on my personal blog today.
I’d love to know what works for you! How do you keep on keeping on? Do you have a favorite way that works to build your client base? Teach us all! Come on over to the SOAR! Forum
With great joy, Karen 
Inspiring Telecall October 18th at 12:00 PT/ 3:00 ET – I’ll be in dialogue with Devaa Haley Mitchell – the founder of the Inspiring Women’s Summit Feminine Wisdom and Leadership Shaping a New World. Devaa is the co-founder of Shift Network and host of the Inspiring Women Summit, a virtual gathering of more than 55,000 women from 160 countries! In this free telecall we’ll discuss the awakening of feminineĀ wisdom and how we can apply it each and every day.
Next Octave Women’s Leadership Program – a sixĀ month program that turns your life around and gets your business on fire. Would you like to learn more? Join me on our next Q & A Tuesday, October 18th at 9:30 PT/12:30 ET. Sign up here.
Tips for Maintaining and Building Long Term Clients
The Key to long term clients? Keep your focus on them rather than on your packages, services, website, etc. I know it’s hard when you are the cook, chief bottle washer, and the server for your business! But, it’s easy to get caught up in running our business and forget about tending clients.
Intuit, sense, and figure out what your past client’s problems or wishes are and offer solutions. Listen carefully to what they say and don’t say. Make it fun! Compelling! High value. Offer additional services, deals, or benefits. Put a note in your calendar to contact them before a big event or milestone. Remind them when a particular holiday or celebration comes around that they wanted photographs or support.
Here are a couple of other steps to take:
- Since you strive to give stellar value during the service delivery be sure to formallyĀ ask for feedbackĀ every single time. Develop a feedback form ā either on-line, written, or via email: What did you love? How can I improve? What else did would you have enjoyed? Feedback sets up a conversation and the more you ask, the more you have a chance to show your commitment to excellence and your responsiveness to their needs.
- Celebrate them. Help your clients see how beautiful, worthy, valuable, fantastic, loving, or competent they really are ā even when they donāt feel that way. Keep holding up an accurate but positive mirror. I look for, search, and find lots of specific ways each coaching and consulting client of mine is smart, dedicated, interesting, compassionate. Whatever their strengths, I amplify it. Then I take it one step further and listen for what really matters to them (their quick mind, their big heart, their common sense, their generosity) and I affirm that as well.
- Show how they are part of a community of people who enjoy your professional service or product. Tell brief stories of other clients ā While you want to be discreet on the details ā you can still point to some pictures and highlight a cute detail that shows the wonderful personality of their kids. Build your reputation by sharing how much you love what you do with funny, quirky, personal stories.
Really and truly? I hold each and every client in my heart and mind. Once they sign a letter of agreement to work with me they have me fully on their team, backing their action, nudging them into accountability. I give them my attention and they feel it. It’s a boost!
One of my favorite clients is an organization I’ve had the pleasure to work with for almost 17 years. I coach the CEO and other senior managers, lead their Senior Management Retreats once or twice a year, train new staff, help develop new managers, resolve conflicts, and celebrate successes. I’ve known some of their staff that long as well. We’ve all grown together. Sometimes I work a lot and sometimes a little, but I always maintain connection. It’s a joy as they create a lot of good in the world by producing events that raise millions for research and services for those with AIDS. Have you ever walked in the SF, LA, or NY AIDS Walk? I have and it’s inspiring beyond belief.
BTW – Tomorrow I’ll post the blog from SOAR! where I’m a guest blogger on Finding and Securing Clients.
What works for you to maintain clients? I’d love to know.
How Important is it to feel Satisfied in Daily Life?
My research shows that just how satisfied you are with your life and work depends on two things:
A. How you design it (does it include things, people, events that are satisfying to you?)
B. How often you feel that you actually are feeling satisfied!
1. Write down 5 elements that feel satisfying to you. Use your senses – what do you feel, smell, see, hear, right now that evoke a small simple smile?
2. Give texture, depth, dimension to your satisfied feelings. Strengthen the feeling and let it grow until it fills you.
3. Set an alarm to remind you to do this for 5 days.
4. Notice what changes.
5. Share your results with us all on our FB page!These steps will increase the spiral of your inner power and an a important paving stone into your wisest self.
Guilt Derails Business Success
Guilt really pulls at our heartstrings. It can be heartbreaking as it takes us down the same old road and into the same old potholes again and again. Guilt derails business success, wrecks relationships, and diminishes our satisfaction with life!
Did you ever see that verse:
I walked down the road and fell in the hole.
I walked down the road again and fell in the hole.
I walked down the road again and this time I noticed the hole. I still fell in.
I walked down the road again and this time I walked around the hole!
I walked down a different road.
Women leaders sabotage their own potential when they repeat patterns of guilt. The only way out? Step aside and walk down a different road. It’s a discipline, like any other business practice that is essential for success.
This week, on one of our free telecalls, we explored how to stay present, authentic and in the moment so that your natural wisdom and insights come forward. Listen in as I dialogue with Carole Sacino, co-author of Savvy Leadership Strategies for Women and Empowering Transformations for Women. She is a clearly a wise feminine Gardener – looking for and cultivating potential where ever she goes. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.
What do you do when guilt puts you in a hole? How do you find a new road? I’d love to know.
Developing Trust and Confidence as a Businesswoman
How to Develop Trust and Confidence as a Businesswoman?
āWhy canāt I get this business off the ground? Iāve been to Business School! What am I missing?ā I’d just met this beautifully dressed small business owner in our first coaching session. She went on to list everything she had in place for her business. I was impressed! Financial systems, marketing, brand development, lawyer, CPA, bookkeeper, communications systems, staff with clear job descriptions and on and on.
Yet, Marta sat before me with tears welling up and out of her eyes. She was frustrated, scared, and deeply discouraged. She knew it all and yet something was missing and a colleague said that I could help. She barely looked at me in her embarrassment.
I asked one of my favorite empowerment questions: āIf you woke up tomorrow morning and everything about your business was 100% improved, what would be different? How would you know?ā
Her first answer? āIād wake up confident instead of feeling too small. Iād trust myself and my idea for this business instead of feeling so scared.ā
At that point her tears turned into a gushing river. Her pain touched my heart. Clearly, this it was time for an āinside-out approachā! Her past beliefs and patterning were messing with her success. Her feelings of insecurity, fear, and mistrust were undercutting her gifts and talents. Anybody relate?
What works? How do you develop confidence and trust? Hereās a couple of steps that we follow at The Wisdom Connection and that Marta used to reach a real place of personal confidence and business success.
1. Discover what works: Describe a time when you did feel confident, when you trusted your decision or a step that you took in your business. Thereās always at least one time! Tell me about it. What did it feel like? Look like? Who else was there with you? What else was happening that contributed to your confidence?Ā If you write it and share it this alone will make a difference ā subtle yet powerful.
2. Notice your self-limiting self-talk:Ā Write down 3-5 sentences that you say to yourself way too often. (I hope you are never this mean to yourself but a lot of us are!) āIām so stupid. I donāt know how to build a business. Iām not as good as the other photographers in this town. I canāt charge what others charge.ā Got it on paper? Now fold up the paper and put it away somewhere – in a box, basket, drawer – and next time you have that thought tell it to go away and into itās new home. It works! Promise!
3. Take a picture or find something in your home, yard, or neighborhood that is a symbol of a Confident You. It might be a self-portrait, the curve of a flower petal, a mighty oak tree or a family member or friend. It might be a well-designed object or something from your childhood.
(Do you want to know what I have on my desk? Iāve never told anyone why! š Itās is an Indian mom with papoose. She stands 6ā tall and proud in her beads, moccasins, and buckskin dress. I got her in New Mexico on vacation, when I was 8 years old. We were moving once more, this time from Lancaster, CA to Butte, MT and I felt pretty shaky. I liked her steady gaze and firm stance. I talked with her every night. Iād stand like her in the mirror. Somehow, she taught me how to feel ok inside no matter what (and going to school with all the miner’s kids in Butte a lot came my way!))
The good news? The first time Marta and I met she could barely think of one confident time, her list of limiting self-talk took a whole hour to list, and she couldnāt imagine what confidence would look like in an object or picture.
Resigned, sheād convinced herself there was no way out. Her pain motivated her to change along with her deep yearning to be a success in business. Plus, as a single mom she needed to provide for her own daughter.
She stuck with it. Dredged up more memories – fleeting moments of confidence. Put more limiting statements in the drawer. She taped up a photo of her daughter performing a favorite dance step that shouted out natural confidence. Now itās a new day and her business is skyrocketing to great success just like yours will ā youāll see!
Clinton on Women as a Vital Source of Growth for our Economy
“Reductions in barriers to female labor force participation would increase America’s GDP by 9 percent, the Euro Zone’s by 13 percent, and Japan’s by 16 percent,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on September 16th. She spoke at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Women and the Economy Summit, held in San Francisco.
“We need to unlock a vital source of growth that can power our economies in the decades to come. That vital source of growth is women,” she said.
She outlined a comprehensive strategy to achieve economic expansion – and I hope stability. Changes in structures, behaviors, and the consciousness of business and government in all countries are needed to unlock and welcome women’s leadership around the world.
Paolo Gianturco, author of Celebrating Women, summarized the event in Womensenews this week: “The women’s conference participants, including Clinton and ministers and delegates from 21 countries in Asia and the Americas, endorsed the San Francisco Declaration which lays out how to dismantle barriers to women in the workforce. It sets commitments for providing female entrepreneurs with access to capital; for reforming legal and regulatory systems so women can access the full range of financial services; for improving women’s access to markets and for supporting the rise of female leaders in the public and private sectors.”
Clinton continued, “Unlocking the potential of women by narrowing the gender gap could lead to a 14-percent rise in per capita income by the year 2020 in several APEC economies including China, Russia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Vietnam and Korea.”
The agreement is a run-up to APEC’s meeting in November in Honolulu.
This is good news. I consider it a personal assignment for each of us to look for ways to make change in our communities. What is in the way? What needs to change in policies, systems, or the way people behave for women to be the key to helping the global economy recover and expand?
What do you think? I’d love to hear your best ideas.
Is Feminine Wisdom Superior to Masculine Wisdom in Leadership?
We have only this moment sparkling like a star in our hand
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment sparkling like a star in our hand — and melting like a snowflake.”Ā Marie Beynon Ray
This quote touches me every day. Perhaps, this is leadership.When we do what we want to do – now. When we discover what matters the most to us and we develop the willingness and ability to act in that direction.
Traditional pictures of leadership highlight someone at the top of a pyramid. Many women (and men) find this an uncomfortable place to sit – not because they aren’t competent to be there, but rather because they prefer to lead as part of a team. In the circle model of leadership each person provides functional leadership when it is their turn, or when their particular set of competencies are called for.
One person may be “where the buck stops”. But, they may lead from behind, or as part of the team rather than standing in front and shouting “let’s go!” I know that’s overstated, yet, it is surprising how many women hold that image.
Posted above my desk, this quote helps me remember to do what i most want to do – now! And to do it in a way that helps and nurtures me as much as I help and nurture others.
Do you have a favorite quote?
Karen Wilhelm Buckley 