This is Part Two of a two-part series about leaning into simple practices that support you in spending more time moving steadily toward making money through the expression of the wisdom life has developed in you. This series showcases the principles and practices we use in the Passion and Profit Action Circle. Our next session starts on Monday, April 23rd.

Getting Better at Making Decisions

If you want a successful, profitable business, sooner or later you need to develop your skill at making decisions.

Because in a funny way, business is nothing more than making a series of decisions and acting on them.

Deciding what business you are in.

Deciding what to call yourself.

Deciding how to articulate what it is you offer, what you bring to the world.

Deciding what income streams to offer.

Deciding when to offer them.

Deciding how much to charge for them.

Deciding who to market to.

Deciding who to study or mentor with.

Deciding how much to invest in a VA or a training program.

We feed procrastination by not deciding. Not deciding which project to work on. Not deciding which article to right. Not deciding which audience to speak to.

Not deciding means we have an excuse for not acting. And while that can calm our lizard brain that is afraid of change, it raises the anxiety for the part of us that is committed to creating work in the world that is lucrative and fulfilling. To find fresh ways to earn good pay sharing the wisdom we’ve developed in this lifetime.

One of the practices that supported me in breaking through with my income was simply keeping a running list of all the decisions I had not yet made. And then using some of the first hour of my day to go through the list and decide.

I recommend you find a way that works for you to make decisions relatively quickly (don’t short cut your own need to process, but don’t let yourself get stuck agitating without making progress.)

The smart and complicated often struggle with being able to see any situation from multiple points of view simultaneously. To seeing the pros and cons of every possible choice. And that can be paralyzing. We all need a way to cut through the endless internal back-and-forth, and pick the path that we’ll move forward on. The truth is that in business it’s often more productive to make the wrong decision rapidly, than it is to postpone making any decision at all.

I am a woo-woo kind of gal, so I use a pendulum. It gets me out of my head, it taps into what the bigger, less conscious part of me knows and wants, but mostly it gives me an answer, right or wrong, so that I move forward.

But it’s up to you to find a method that works for you. It could be flipping a coin. It could be using the Sufi practice of Remembrance. It could be talking to your body about how the choice feels.

It could be relying on a partner, a mastermind group, or a mentor, but ideally it’s a method that connects you to the clearest, wisest part of yourself and to the part of you that can go beyond logic, or mass consciousness, and truly sense what is right for you.

One of the big things we do in the Action Circle we help you build your decision-making muscles by encouraging you to pick a Priority Project and by providing a safe, friendly place to ask for help if you get stuck. Want to come play? The next session of the Passion and Profit Action Circle starts on Monday, April 23rd. Learn more and register here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac.

In the last four weeks, I have worked on a task that I’ve put off for too long. I will finish it by this Friday and celebrate…the energy it will free being off my plate is spectacular.

The small bites approach has really been helpful. And a comment made on the recent group call somehow has helped me attain a new focusing ability.

I now have a new calmness, focus, and peace of mind that I can’t put a price on.

Cynthia Raman

Register today at http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac

In this video, I share another inspirational insight on how smart and complicated business owners can make money in fresh, new ways by discovering and delivering the wisdom that life has developed in them.

In it I share a story and an exercise that helps you move past the shadow or phantom desires so the clearer, truer vision of what you want to create comes forward.

It’s about 7 minutes, mostly story.

Prefer to read the transcript? Download it here.

If you have comments, questions, or your own strategies for moving into the space of “What If”, please share them below!

This is Part One of a two-part series about leaning into simple practices that support you in spending more time moving steadily toward making money through the expression of the wisdom life has developed in you. This series showcases the principles and practices we use in the Passion and Profit Action Circle. Our next session starts on Monday, April 23rd.

If you’re like most business owners I know, you work hard. You have plans and projects and commitments that keep you hopping all day, most days.

And yet, you don’t feel like you are making meaningful, satisfying progress creating work that is both fulfilling and lucrative.
The most likely reason: too many irons in the fire.

It’s true. Try to do too many things, and all that effort results in you inching forward in multiple directions but not really going anywhere.
It means you do many small “launches” none of which produce a lot of profit.

It means you do a little marketing for a lot of different things and never really feel that depth of reach and momentum building in any one area.

It means you try to make lots of different people happy with the service you provide but end up too tired and drained to really excel at the level of care you provide.

The frustrating thing about being a human being is that we live within the bounds of time and space. It means that we only operate through the grace of a body with limited capacity and energy.

It means we can’t use the same hour to do five different things simultaneously. (Same with money – we can’t spend the same $100 on five different things that cost $100 each.)

Working with smart and complicated business owners, I see this challenge a lot (not to mention living it myself.) What I’ve learned is that I can’t “take away” things on your plate that you are attached to having on there. And it’s not good for me to guilt you into feeling you should drop things that do matter to you.

But I can encourage you to give yourself the gift of simplicity. To allow yourself to experience the relative ease of focusing on one project – not just for the next hour, but for the day, or the week, or the month.

I can give you some tools to help you choose where to devote your precious time and energy.

I had a breakthrough with this for myself at the end of 2011. I really saw, for the first time, that it WAS NOT GOING TO WORK to scramble madly to fulfill the 15 projects I’d chosen for the year. I allowed myself to sink and sort until I saw that I really had just three business projects that mattered: private clients, my Mojo group, and my Action Circle membership. And I’ve been surprised and delighted to find that with less on my plate (it’s still a lot but it’s a leap forward for me), I can offer better care, better service, and more of the transformation I care about because I am not so frantic.

The letting go of too-much-on-your-plate happens not through force, but through recognizing that your current M.O. isn’t taking you where you want to go. Through having the courage to say no to something you are excited about but which isn’t in your highest good.

Through wanting, truly wanting, to be more present, more full, as you walk through your life.

One of the big things we do in the Action Circle is encourage you to pick a Priority Project and spend the first and best part of each day moving THAT project forward. Want to come play? The next session of the Passion and Profit Action Circle starts on Monday, April 23rd.

“I am finding that participating in the Action Circle is helping me to be at least 3 times more efficient than I was previously.

On the practical level, sharing what I intend to do and what I have accomplished each day forces a clarity in my own mind and actions.

On a professional level, seeing what others are thinking about, acting on and grappling with gives me ideas to implement myself, but in a v quick, efficient way (without having to read a whole blog post!)

On a psychological level, sharing with others gives me the background support that a lone-entrepreneur just doesn’t get – it’s the ‘head popped over the cubicle divider to see another human being’ kinda feeling.

I probably spend 10 minutes per day sharing and commenting, 5 days per week.

But knowing that those 10 minutes will occur sometime during my work day makes me much more effective. There’s a curious alchemy to being part of this group that I can’t quite explain, but it is turning me into the proactive business-person that I always hoped I could be.

Thanks, Isabel!”

Emma Jarrett, Performance Coach, http://www.emmajarrett.ca/

Register today at http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac

Part Three – Work in Short, Focused Bursts

This is Part Three of a three-part series about leaning into simple practices and disciplines that allow you to move steadily toward making money in fresh, new ways. This series showcases the principles and practices we use in the Passion and Profit Action Circle. Today is the final day to join the session that began on Monday, March 26th.

When you are smart and complicated, you have a tendency to value the big, the grand, the elaborate, over the small, the simple, and the humble.

In terms of work productivity, that can look like minimizing the value of taking small steps or making incremental shifts, and looking down on setting the bar low for what you accomplish each day.

The prevailing thought is: If I can’t spend three hours on this today, it’s not worth spending ten minutes. And then too many days go by without that big investment of time, and your commitment to your important-but-easy-to-put-off project gets postponed so long you begin to lose the drive to make it happen.

That’s why in the action circle, we encourage the discipline of working on your projects in short, focused bursts.

A work burst means spending 5-45 minutes working on a specific, and important, project without interruption.

When you master the work burst, you start to realize that doing 5-10-15 minutes a day on a big, important project actually adds up quickly.

If you have the luxury of a full work day to do what you want, you can do several longer work bursts. But if you have a more typical day full of other commitments, you also realize that you can squeeze in a short burst here and there between things and move forward without the luxury of a lot of time.

In fact, I wrote everything in this article up to this point in the 7 minutes I had between taking my son to school in the morning and going to ballet class, which pretty much took care of my whole morning.

My favorite way to use this technique is to commit to using the first, and best, part of my day to work on a that vitally-important-but-easy-to-put-off project. That project I might be tempted to say I don’t have time for.

What that could look like for you is beginning the day doing whatever puts you in a positive frame of mind. Prayer, meditation, running, or re-reading your inspiring vision.

And then, before checking your email, or launching into anything else time-consuming or energy-draining, working on what you’ve chosen as your priority project for the week or for the month – whether it’s creating the marketing for a new program, reaching out to establish key business relationships, working on your message development, or rewriting the web copy you’ve been meaning to update for years.

Working on that without interruption for whatever time frame you choose: whether it’s five minutes or 45 minutes.

And then, you take a break. You celebrate that you put your most important work first.

If you have a busy day, you can move into your calls and appointments knowing that you are not letting things slide. If you have a more open day, you have the option to do another focused work burst on that project or move on to another one.

Doing this consistently takes practice and lots of reminders. Doing this consistently keeps you focused, strong, and moving forward even when life is throwing you curve balls.

In the Action Circle, we encourage you to choose your most important projects, and then spend the first half hour or so of your day on that project. Not any old project. Not the project of the day. But the project you’ve chosen as most important. That’s how you start to really gain momentum.

You can still view a full hour of live streaming exploration of Getting More Done When You’re Smart and Complicated. Go here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/isabelparlett and click on the video in the top right called “3 Ways . . .” recorded on February 23rd.

Today is the final day to join the session of the Passion and Profit Action Circle that began on Monday, March 26th. Plus, if you join today, you get to participate in Friday’s Annual Planning Quarterly Review at no additional cost.

Register today at http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac

Part Two – Harness the Power of Projects

This is Part Two of a three-part series about leaning into simple practices and disciplines that allow you to move steadily toward making money in fresh, new ways. You can read Part One here. This series showcases the principles and practices we use in my ongoing Passion and Profit Action Circle. Our next session starts on Monday, March 26th.

As a smart and complicated business owner, you may not have trouble accessing a big vision of what you want to create in your business and in the world. But it’s not much good having a big vision if you struggle to translate what you see into the practical steps you need to take to make it a reality.

One of the key skills for smart and complicated business owners to develop is to use the power of contraction to gradually, respectfully, narrow down the full range of options you could take, so you can see clearly the next practical step you will take.

The gradual part is important for the smart and complicated. To go from your big vision straight to what to do in the next half hour is often too big a leap. But if you gradually narrow things down, after a few goes it becomes clearer what steps are right in front of you.

How do you narrow things down?

The one I use, when I take people through the Annual Planning Process, is to start big by calling in the qualities we want to experience in the coming year. Peace. Joy. Risk-taking. Order. Those qualities inspire your themes for the year — the broad strokes of what you want to bring into being.

Then, I encourage you to brain dump every practical, concrete way you can imagine those themes coming to life.

From there, you can define your projects.

Choosing your projects, and staying focused on them, is a key to turning your creative expression into new, just-right-for-you sources of income.

What is a project? A project is a temporary effort, with a defined beginning and end, designed to help you achieve what you desire.
A project is a way to organize your activity. It is defined by the action steps that move you through the project from beginning to end. You complete the project by taking as many of the actions you’ve defined as possible, as well as new ones that emerge as you are in motion, within the time frame you’ve set, as quickly as is healthy and reasonable.

My smart and complicated clients tell me it’s much more empowering and energizing to pick projects rather than set goals.

A goal defines the end point, but a project defines the journey. It helps you put your focus on your efforts as much as your outcomes. Somehow, it feels more fun to work on a project rather than anxiously hope you’re doing enough to reach your goals.

Done right, a project builds in a point of completion. So instead of endlessly chasing the goal of two more clients, you execute your Spring-2012-Client-Boosting-Campaign, and then notice how well it worked to get you those two clients.

It’s a little different, right?

In his book, Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky suggest that “everything is a project.” But, if everything is a project, life can get overwhelming. So one key to harnessing the power of projects is choosing which projects are a priority.

In the Action Circle, we recommend that every month, you pick:
• One revenue project
• One business development project, and
• One personal project

If you’re in business, having revenue projects is essential.

A revenue project is simply a project intended to bring money in the door. If you are not conscientiously focused on projects that bring in revenue, you are not actually in business. A revenue project can be organized around securing a new batch of private clients, enrolling a teleclass, or selling a number of info products.

A development project is a project that strengthens your business but may not directly, in and of itself, generate revenue. A development project could include updating your web site, building referral relationships with key sources, or improving your business systems. Many new business owners get stuck in the trap of focusing only on development projects, and leaving the sometimes scarier revenue projects on the back burner.

Personal projects simply let you acknowledge that you have a life, and that moving forward there is important too.

Every four weeks in the Passion and Profit Action Circle, we support you in turning your big dreams into concrete results by asking you to choose your priority projects for the coming session, and post those publicly to your small group.

You can still view a full hour of live streaming exploration of Getting More Done When You’re Smart and Complicated. Go here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/isabelparlett and click on the video in the top right called “3 Ways . . .” recorded on February 23rd.

The next session of the Passion and Profit Action Circle starts on Monday, March 26th. The Action Circle is a place that smart and complicated business owners come together to support each other in taking small, steady steps to realize their big, ambitious visions. Learn more here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac.

Register today at http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac

Part One – Alternate Cycles of Expansion and Contraction

This is Part One of a three-part series about leaning into simple practices and disciplines that allow you to move steadily toward making money in fresh, new ways honoring the wisdom developed in your life. This series showcases the principles and practices we use in my ongoing Passion and Profit Action Circle. Our next session starts on Monday, March 26th.

A lot of the clients I work with worry that being smart, and having an ease with complexity is a liability, that it’s something they have to overcome or work against in order to have a thriving business!

They may feel like they have to dumb down what they offer to get the clients and make the sales they want. They may feel they have to work against themselves to be simple enough to connect with their audience and make sales.

These challenges can show up trying to find the simple message in your complex ideas, finding the teachable or transferable process in the wisdom accumulated in your life, and finding the practical steps forward to realize your bigger vision.

The danger is that we see such a big vision of what is possible it can feel paralyzing to take the first step.

We can be so addicted to the energy and excitement of what we see in our vision that we are bored by the small steps that would move us forward.

We can get impatient with what feels like slow motion forward, so that we abandon one path for the thrill of a new one.

One of the most seductive struggles is valuing our ability to be smart and visionary so highly that we forget that that having good ideas is only a small fraction of what is needed in order to make money sharing our insights, our ideas, and the wisdom of our lifetime.

We may shrink away from words like accountability and discipline, and yet it’s these very things that free us. These very things that move us from ideas to implementation to income.

And when we understand and respect our own unique way of functioning, that complexity and intensity we bring can actually become an asset.
You learn to manage your complexity, instead of trying to abandon it.

You don’t get rid of your orientation to complexity, you add complementary skills that help you use the complexity without being hampered by it.
One of those skills is learning to move fluidly between cycles of expansion and contraction.

Ultimately, all creative acts require moving between phases of expansion and contraction.

In the expansion stage, you increase the number of options of what you could do, or you increase the scope and impact in what you do. In business practice, expansion happens during brainstorming, mind mapping, and visioning. Research. Master minding.

You want to lean in to expansion when you need inspiration and energy. When you want to bring new life to your project, when you’re stuck in a rut, or when you’re bored. Expansive practices are great when you sense there is a better, more efficient way forward.

In the contraction stage, you narrow down the options to a manageable number. You choose. You take the full range of possibilities and decide which to concentrate on.

In contraction mode, you are the fierce editor, the bold leader who chooses of all options which to go with. Contraction shows up when you choose your top three projects for the year, define the task to tackle in the first half hour of your day, pick the one marketing effort that you believe will have the most payoff.

You want to lean into contraction practices when you feel overwhelmed. When you’re frazzled. When you can’t keep up with the schedule you’ve created for yourself. When you feel pulled in too many directions. When you don’t see that you’re getting any where.

Good strategy is ultimately about doing this – seeing and considering a full range of options, then choosing the one that makes the best use of your time, your energy, and your money.

Success is about taking that one option and sticking with it over time until the plan and the vision come to fruition.

As a general rule, smart and complicated folk tend to be good at expansion, and tend to under-utilize contraction. That’s why it’s smart to build in structures that encourage you to narrow your options. To build that muscle that lets you see all kinds of tantalizing possibilities and then pick one to move with.

It’s very discouraging to see such big possibilities for yourself and for the world, but not experience forward momentum. Work with yourself in your business so that the options narrow down – so the answer to the constant question of “what should I be doing?” gets clearer. So those voices in your head get quieter because you’ve taken the time to narrow things down.

The practices that will help you do that include:
• Picking no more than 9 key projects for the year, three revenue-based projects, three development projects, and three personal projects (more on this in Part Two).
• Choosing no more than 3 key projects to move forward in a given month (same as the above – 1 revenue, 1 development, 1 personal).
• Choosing no more than 5 key actions to tackle in a day.
• Knowing your absolute top priority project and spending the first, freshest half -hour of the day on that.

And those are all things we work on in the Passion and Profit Action Circle.

You can still view a full hour of live streaming exploration of 3 Ways to Be More Productive When You’re Smart and Complicated. Go here http://www.ustream.tv/channel/isabelparlett and click on the video in the top right called “3 Ways . . .” recorded on February 23rd.

The next session of the Passion and Profit Action Circle starts on Monday, March 26th. The Action Circle is a place that smart and complicated business owners come together to support each other in taking small, steady steps to realize their big, ambitious visions. Learn more here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac.

Register today at http://soundbiteshaman.com/ppac

Here is another case study of how message work can energize an already successful business:

Mark Silver called me last fall to ask for my help in solving a challenge with his messaging.

Now, if you don’t know him, Mark has a wonderful business that teaches heart-centered entrepreneurs kind and loving ways to work with themselves and to market to their clients. His work combines his training as a Sufi healer with his knowledge about building simple but effective systems to help businesses grow.

His company, Heart of Business, is well-established (multiple six-figures), and, as I like to joke, when it comes to communication, Mark is nearly as smart as I am! So why would he need my help with his messaging?

When you’re newer in business, you feel as if everything will be great once you are making regular money. But the truth is, as your business grows, so does your desire to make sure that your business is truly a reflection of the biggest, deepest message you are here to share. It’s no longer a question of how to get clients, but how to get the right clients and create the opportunity to do the right work.

What Mark told me was: “After being in business for ten years, I had a solid tag line (When you want to make a difference, but need to make a profit.), but the spiritual component of what we do was hidden. People had to really look deeper to figure it out. Even though the tagline and message were taking a stand, it felt like the current language was hampering us. The shiny-ness, relevance, and impact that I wanted to have weren’t there.”

He reported that it felt like his team was working harder to get the same results each year, and that it was hard for even happy clients to talk about them clearly and spread the word. Without the clarity in his message, he felt stuck in his decision-making and strategic implementation. Without the ability to name his essential message, he couldn’t move forward with the rebranding and website overhaul he wanted and he was reluctant to bring on team to support the effort without the confidence that he could communicate what the business was all about.

Jokingly, Mark said at the beginning of our session, “I’m hoping you can solve my challenge in about five minutes.” We laughed, though the truth is, the clearer the intention my client brings to the session, the more likely they get what they want. So, I asked him to tell me he wanted to convey that wasn’t yet being said.

The bottom line was, he wanted to be more explicit about the spiritual aspect of what he offered and the potential for people to engage in business in a way that is sacred. I listened carefully and, between knowing his work from the many calls we’ve done together, and reading his beautiful book “Unveiling the Heart of Your Business,” within about ten minutes I was able to reflect back what I was hearing and say, “so basically what you’re saying is that every act of business is an act of love.” Or rather, as we clarified, not that every act of business is an act of love but that “every act of business can be an act of love.”

Bingo! Mark knew immediately that we’d hit on it. Of course, I wanted to do my due diligence and asked a bunch of questions to make sure there wasn’t something more that needed to be said. I was impressed that when I asked Mark if his message was that if you are more spiritually connected, you have a greater chance of being successful with your business, he gave me a pretty emphatic “no!” He said it was a spiritually inaccurate message, as attractive as it might be to the audience.

Mark left the call elated that we had found the words to capture his core message. About a month later, he reported that bringing his message into focus had made a huge difference.

He was in love with the message (and the tagline that came out of it), and his team was as well. Soon after our session, he had brought on a designer and got moving with his web redesign because he could finally communicate the heart of his story. He felt the clarity and crispness of his message had improved, that his blog posts were having more impact, and that he was more on point when interviewed. He felt like he was planting a flag, saying “this is what I stand for,” without needing to hide behind other capabilities.

Curious, I later asked Mark why he’d chosen to work with me, given how well connected he is, and how many talented branding/marketing/copywriting people he knows. What he told me was that “the intersection of spirit and business isn’t easy to talk about. I appreciate your complex understanding of language and how language is used. You aren’t just about coming up with phrases, but getting to what it is we are trying to say. I knew that you could help me have a spiritual message that was also grounded and practical.”

Mark introduced his new website this fall, to rave reviews and enthusiastic comments, including for his new tag line. In fact, Mark wrote about our work together and his choice of a “rule-breaking” tagline in a recent post.

If your business has hit the wall, or you just feel ready to bust loose with a bigger, bolder expression of your work in the world, a good place to start is with your core message. Clarity is a funny thing. When you can name your bigger, deeper message, you unleash powerful energy that propels you out into the world.

This is Lesson Six in a series of six posts that preview just some of the content from my How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe home-study program (special savings below). You can read the earlier posts here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/category/impact-and-income

Elevator speeches, taglines, titles, and headlines are what I like to call “Get people in the door” language.

The goal of all of those things is to get your audience’s attention and to earn you the opportunity to tell them more. It’s not the place to unpack the deep meaning in what you do or get in to some of the real subtleties and distinctions about the process that you take people through.

If you do not get people’s attention, you simply won’t have the opportunity to tell them the bigger, deeper story that you’re here to share. And in order to get people’s attention, what I find is you often need to be willing to be simpler and plainer about what it is you’re here to offer than may come naturally.

The Biggest Key to a Good Elevator Speech

The single most important tip that I can give you on having a good elevator speech, and that is a good elevator speech – a good verbal introduction – is 80% to 95% about what your audience wants. And it may only be 5% to 20% about the unique thing that you do.

It’s so tempting to want to get in to that deeper, bigger story of what we’re here to share every time we have a chance to say what we do. When I talk to people who offer something complex and unusual, they say, “Oh, I want to be able to explain what I do.” And though it may seem strange to say so, the verbal introduction is not the place to explain what you do. It’s really the time to let people know who you work with and what you do for them.

This is a principle that lots of marketing people teach. But we’re really going to be talking about how to use that principle without losing touch with that deeper message.

So what that 80%-to-95% rule means is that the thing you do that makes you special or different may actually only show up as a single word or a phrase in your verbal introduction. It may even be a feeling that comes from the word choices that you use. With practice and guidance, you learn to find those words or phrases that bring your True Spirit in to focus while still really making sure that your words are effective at getting people in the door.

One of the skills in the art of saying what you do is knowing what to say when.

If you try to put too much in to that elevator speech, in to that verbal introduction, you really do risk losing the audience and losing the opportunity to be able to tell them a longer more complex, more interesting story.

There are two things that you need to do if you’re going to find your get-people-in-the-door language.

Number one is you need to make a decision about who you want to work with. If you are still confused about who your audience is, work on that first.

And even if you’re still confused or uncertain, at a certain point, you need to do make a decision, and you need to say, “This is the audience I’m going to work with. This is the audience I’m going to craft language for. This is the audience I’m going to go pursue.”

Number two is to do the research and exploration to understand what that audience wants. Because you won’t be able to move forward with this work or have good marketing language without it. Remember, if 80% to 95% of your elevator speech is about what your audience wants, it’s going to be pretty hard to write that if you don’t know who they are and what they want.

To make writing the elevator speech really simple, we’re going to do it in two stages. The first stage is going to be what I call a “bare bones” elevator speech.

Your Bare Bones Elevator Speech

Think of the bare bones elevator speech like the skeleton of your introduction. It may not seem exciting, and it may not be totally satisfying to you on a soul level. But once you have that bare bones elevator speech in place, there are some really simple ways to juice it up and make it richer and more reflective of who you are so that it not only gets the job done; you also have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s really aligned with your deeper message.

The Bare Bones Elevator Speech is, honestly, the formula you’ve probably heard before, and it goes like this. “I help this group of people to get these kinds of results and outcomes.”
What goes in the first blank is a description of your target audience. And in the second blank goes the concrete results, solutions, or outcomes that you have discovered that your audience wants enough to invest money to get.

You might say, “I help professional women to break out of the cycle of emotional eating.” And this is plain and simple.

Is it exciting? Does it knock your socks off? No.

Does it tell your audience who you work with and what you do for them? Yes.

My friend, Cherry Norris, the Hollywood Dating Director, says something like “I help women over 40 to quickly meet and marry the man of their dreams.” Very straightforward. Very clear.

One of my clients, Deana Isaacs, at www.brightandgifted.com, says, “I help bright kids get perfect SAT scores.”

I want you to see that your introduction can be that simple and straight-forward.

If you only did the bare bones version, you would still have an effective elevator speech that you could use and get results with.

So, keep your bare bones elevator speech down to earth. No jargon, no big words, no beautiful poetic metaphors.

I love beautiful poetic metaphors. This ain’t the place to use them.

Don’t be cute. Don’t be clever. Don’t be metaphorical. Be clear.

If your elevator speech does not work on this Bare Bones level, making the language richer and more interesting isn’t really going to do anything for you.

It will sound prettier. But, it won’t get you more business.

Your Enhanced Elevator Speech

Now once you have your Bare Bones Elevator Speech, how you can start to enhance it and bring in more of your True Spirit and your deeper message into it. You can add just a few words, or a phrase that brings more depth and meaning into it.

You can use a few more words in a way that showcases your compassion for your audience, your deep understanding of their challenges, or the nuance of the outcome. That little phrase might be the only enhancement of your Bare Bones Elevator Speech.

One simple way to do that is to say, “Here’s a concrete tangible outcome I’m going to help you get,” and then “Here’s the deeper meaning to it.”

So, for example my bare bones elevator speech might be, “I help spiritually-oriented business owners to say what they do so they can get more clients.”

But when I describe the problem or challenge with a little bit more depth and sophistication, it dials in a little bit better for my perfect audience, and I say, “I help spiritually-oriented business owners to say what they do when what they do is deep, powerful, and hard to describe.”

Instead of saying “I help people with chronic pain experience relief,” which is fine, you might say, “I help people living with chronic pain to experience the sweet relief of having their pain lift even for a moment.”

Or, instead of saying “I help women entrepreneurs to build six-figure businesses,” you might say “I help women entrepreneurs to build thriving, six-figure businesses that allow them to truly nurture and care for the communities they lead.”

Other examples of slightly enhanced elevator speeches:

“I help creative geniuses to turn their innovations into substantial income.”

“I give people who feel overworked and underpaid the courage to make the leap in to their own profitable and rewarding businesses.”

“I help busy successful, professional women to find hidden time in their day to get more done with less effort.”

Those few carefully chosen words can elevate your elevator speech to a new level, to a level that connects emotionally with your perfect audience.

And that’s how you craft an elevator speech that is both effective and soulful.

Both groups of my Put the Mojo in Your Message training sold out last week.

2. Purchase my home-study program: How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe. http://soundbiteshaman.com/how-to-say. Use promo code “NOW” to get $25 off today through Monday!

I think this product is invaluable for people who are practicing their vocation, not just making a living. The process Isabel guides you through is soul work as much as marketing work, and that makes a meaningful difference in the “transmissive” quality of your promotional language. I found that there was much shadow I needed to work through MYSELF that was subtly disempowering my message. When I faced this through the preparation exercises, something ineffable changed in the way my marketing writing has been received, even though the words have not changed much. My confidence is greatly enhanced, and it shows in the quality of my marketing AND my work.

Christina Sophie www.integral-tantra.com

To get more info go to http://soundbiteshaman.com/how-to-say and get instant access to audio and transcript for six lessons and more! Use promo code “NOW” to get $25 off today through Monday!

This is Lesson Five in a series of six posts that preview just some of the content from both my Put the Mojo in Your Message training and my How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe home-study program. You can read the earlier posts here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/category/impact-and-income

Let’s talk about how you talk about your process in a sales conversation; whether you call that a free session, a strategy session, a discovery session, or an enrolling conversation. It’s any direct conversation; face-to-face or on the phone, that you’re having with someone that you are hoping will end with you having a new client.

You Don’t Need to Prove That You’re Brilliant

So, the first thing I want to say is the biggest mistake that people make in these sales conversations is actually trying to demonstrate their process and hoping that the experience of the process will be so attractive that the person will invest highly in having more of that experience.

If you just try to coach someone as if they were a paying client and hope that they love it and will hire you from it, that may not work that well. People may love the session, but they leave without feeling the need to hire you.

What’s neat is that when these conversations work and when they’re done well, they will actually follow the “basic story” formula we just talked about: Pain, Hope and Plan. Or you can switch the order and do Hope, Pain, and Plan.

Asking Hope and Pain Questions

So, a really effective sales conversation might begin like this.

You ask your prospective client questions about what they most want and what it would look and feel like if they got that thing they really want. So this is the hope.
Notice, by the way, here you are not explaining to them or telling them, you are asking them. So they are describing what they want in their own words.

At this stage, you’re not offering solutions and strategies. A lot of coaches, as soon as you hear somebody has a challenge, you want to jump in with a wonderful solution, or suggestion, or idea, and it’s really important you do not do that.

Here’s why:

Most people don’t like to part with their money. So when someone makes a decision to work with you and to part with their hard earned cash, they really connect on a very deep level with the cost of staying where they are and the possibility of going someplace different.

And if you jump in too quickly to, (and we do this unconsciously to show how brilliant we are or how amazing our process is), or if we give too much of our service and our insights and our ideas, we actually short circuit the process of the prospective client really connecting internally to the Pain of what they’re currently experiencing and the possibility that their situation could be different.

Again, at this point, your process does not come in to it at all. Your actual process might be informing what questions you’re asking people about their Pain, or about what they want for themselves, but you’re not talking about your process or trying to explain it to someone.

You never want to talk about your process until you’ve established that somebody wants the outcome that you have to offer. It’s wasted breath. It’s wasted opportunity.
So, first two parts of an enrolling conversation should be either Pain and Hope, or Hope and Pain, and really getting them to talk about what they’re experiencing with very little input from you.

Now You Can Talk about Your Process

Now, once you’ve established that the person you’re speaking to actually wants something badly enough to invest time and money to get it, you’ve established that they’re clear what some of the challenges are that are getting in the way of them having what they want; the person you speak to will start to realize that it may be difficult for them to get what they want without some kind of support, whether it’s from you or from someone else.

And if you genuinely, genuinely believe that what you do can help them get the thing they just told you they want, you can now introduce your process, which we call The Plan.

The way that sounds when I’m doing these conversations is something like this, “Here is what I hear you really want. Here is what you’ve told me are the challenges that you’re facing. Here’s what you’ve told me it’s costing you. Here’s what you’ve told me you stand to gain from getting some help.” In my case, it would be with your message.

I might then say, “I have a program that’s designed to help people like you overcome these kinds of challenges and achieve the thing it is that you just said you wanted.” You’d obviously customize that. Like I might say, “I have a program that’s really designed to help you overcome the challenges about putting the intangible thing you do in to words and really help you connect with your deepest message and express that in clear simple language in your business.”

A simpler way to say it that works just as well, too; again, depending in what your strategy is, is just to say, “Here’s how I can help you get ___,” and you’d fill in the blank, with whatever it is you know you can offer. “Would you like to hear about it?”

And that way, you’re not giving them the fire hose of information. And if they say, “yes,” this is where you might say, “Well, when we work together, I’ll take you through these three steps.” Or, “I will offer you these four things.” Or, “Together, we will put in place these five pieces to help you grow your business.”

The key here is to keep it brief and simple. Something that somebody can remember without having it all written out for them. You’re not talking about number of sessions or calls or what happens in a specific session. Broad strokes.

Concluding the Conversation

Once I’ve given those broad strokes, then I’ll ask another question and I’ll say, “Does that sound like a process you’d like to experience?” Or, “Does that sound like something you would like to go through?”

There’s no point, by the way, talking about the details of what you offer, or the price, unless they answer yes to that question.

And if they say yes, I say, “Great. Here’s how it works.”

And then I go in to the nitty gritty of what they’re going to get when they sign up with you. And only once I feel that I’ve really painted a picture of this amazing experience they’re going to have, and what the package includes, will I then go in to the financial investment.

So, that really is just a broad stroke picture of how and when to talk about your process in a selling or enrolling conversation.

Both groups of my Put the Mojo in Your Message training have sold out! We will be offering it again in November.

The good news is, you can get all the content we’ve previewed here, and much more, when you purchase our home-study program: How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe. http://soundbiteshaman.com/how-to-say

I thought the worksheets were immensely helpful. The symptoms were all right on (again contributing to realizing that I’m not alone) and translating the ‘what I do’ to ‘what my clients get to feel’ was helpful. While I don’t have a label, in other words I’m not “a massage therapist” or ” a realtor”, I will have to create my own label I guess (!), writing down the skills I see in myself and translating to what the client receives was very helpful.

Jennifer Bloome, Fertile Business Sage, www.JenniferBloome.com

For 20 years I have grappled with questions of how to market my business. This lesson has helped me define and focus on a target audience with a sense of purpose and peace. I now have tools to build programs that challenge me and excite me and that assist people to move forward with simple, practical tools to create a more fulfilling life. You have provided such a clear, simple, yet profound method for us to model on. Thank you so much Isabel.

Rhonda Ohlson http://www.bonesforlife.biz

To get more info go to http://soundbiteshaman.com/how-to-say and get instant access to audio and transcript for six lessons and more!

This is Lesson Four in a series of six posts that preview just some of the content from my Put the Mojo in Your Message training as well as my How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe. You can read the earlier posts here: http://soundbiteshaman.com/category/impact-and-income.

Every single business owner needs to be able to use written words to tell the story of what they offer and why it’s important. It doesn’t even matter so much that story is being told on a flier, on a webpage, or in a promotional email. Regardless of where those written words are showing up, telling a compelling story (not your personal rags-to-riches story, but a clear flow of ideas) is key to promoting and selling your programs, products, and services.

In fact, the biggest underlying reason I see business owners struggle with copy is that they haven’t actually worked out yet what they are trying to say. That’s why I encourage all my clients to take the time to write that basic story about what they offer, before worrying about what the program or product is, or what the details of the offer are, or where the words are going to appear.

And, once you invest the time in writing your basic story, then most of your copy is already written, you just need to add:
• Headlines and sub-heads
• Bullet points
• Offer details
• And a strong call to action

Here’s the thing, all marketing pieces, have an underlying structure. And what is really cool is that if you understand that structure, then writing your story becomes much, much easier.

So, the simple formula for creating your basic story, the formula that underlies pretty much every effective marketing piece is The Pain + The Hope + The Plan. What you have to say about these three things will be fundamentally the same for most of your offers. So when you write this “story” in a way that satisfies you, you’ll be able to write copy with more fluidity and ease.

Let’s talk a bit about each of these sections:

The Pain

So the Pain is where you write a little bit about what you see is the challenging situation that your prospective client is experiencing before they know that you exist.

The big fear here is that by writing about your audience’s pain that you’re being manipulative. The truth is that while evoking pain can be done in a manipulative manner, it can also be done in a deeply compassionate manner. It’s not supportive to see someone in pain, and then pretend that pain doesn’t exist. Is it?

It only becomes manipulative if you’re trying to whip people in to a pain that they never had before you started talking. Or you’re exaggerating the scenario to accentuate the fear.

And truthfully, the only way your audience will know that you can help them with the very real challenges that they are facing, is if you can talk about those challenges in a way that convinces them that you have some understanding and intimacy of who they are and what they’re up against.

What I want you to consider is that the Pain section is actually where you’re creating connection with your audience!

The beginning of any marketing piece, you need to “get people in the door” and give them a reason to keep reading. And the best way to do that is to show them that you know who they are and what they are experiencing.

The Hope

This is where you want to paint a vivid and compelling picture of how great life can be when someone takes the leap of faith and experiences the transformation you have to offer.

A very simple way to think about this is the Pain is the before, and the Hope is the after. The Hope is the relieving of the Pain.

So the Hope section will be a blend of the outcomes, solutions, and experiences your audience knows they’re looking for (even before they know you exist) with the concepts and ideas that you hold most dear. When you blend them together, it really makes your story very compelling.

If I were writing the story for my business, using this principle, I might write about practical outcomes that result from working with me, like having a successful business, getting more clients, making more money, but I would also write about the things that are meaningful to me, like connecting with the deepest message you’re here to share, and the satisfaction of knowing that you’re fulfilling what you were called here to do. I would write about both of those.

Within this section, you can go back and forth between the practical outcomes and the deeper meaning. If you had to put it in order, I often recommend you talk about the practical benefits first and then unfold in to the deeper meaning.

So, if use an example about a woman going through a divorce; it would sound like: “When you connect with and recognize your own beauty, then this is what becomes possible. You move out in to the world with more confidence. You engage in relationships from a different place. You have more courage and confidence to create new friendships or even new romantic relationships.”

The most touching, moving writing has a well-developed Hope section. Copy that feels more flat or superficial, or hype-y, tends to not have a well-developed Hope section.

The other thing that will happen is this section will go flat if you’re only focusing on the concrete, tangible outcomes, and you’re not including your deeper meaning. And then it’ll sound more like, “Oh, are you having trouble finding words and communicating what you do? Well, I can help you get more clients and make more money and it’s going to be great.”

It actually will feel disconnected. It will feel like, well, wait, we were just talking about one struggle, and now you’re talking about a solution. But there is nothing in between to help your reader shift from one to the other.

The Plan

The final part in our formula is the Plan.

In finished copy, the plan can be as simple as the next step your reader needs to take to move towards a solution of their challenge, or as complex as you walking them through your process. It’s either “here’s what you need to do next,” the call to action, or a longer description: “Let me walk you through how I help you to go from the before to the after.”

So what that will sound like is something like, “So what I do is teach you the five steps of shifting your beliefs so that you can earn more money.” Or, “What I do is guide you through the four phases of loving your life as a single woman.” Or, “What I do is take you through four steps to aligning with our deeper message and bringing that out in your business communication.”

To have credibility, you want to give it structure. I recommend you have a defined number of ingredients or elements or components. And you want to craft that phrase that says, “So what I do is…” and then you have some kind of verb. It can be “Teach you,” or “Guide you through,” or “Support you with,” and then you want the number of things, and then that last piece is about the outcome.

“What I do is teach you the five steps of shifting your beliefs on a deep level so you can earn more money. ”

So if you’re writing a longer written piece, like a web sales page, after you say that first line, like “The five steps of shifting your belief,” you would actually want to list what the five steps were, and you might actually write a paragraph or have a bullet list under each of those five steps. That would be the long version.

In a free report, you might say, “I like to guide you through the four phases of loving your life as a single woman.” In that report, you might write about each of those four phases.

In a promotional email, again, if you said “I have five steps to better business results,” you might bullet list the five steps and then have the call to action. Or you might say: “I want to teach you my five steps to better business results,” and then you might have a link to a register for a free teleclass where you actually then give all five steps and talk a little bit about each.

The great thing that you’re demonstrating is that when you know your basic story, and you’ve written it, you can use it in a longer piece, you can use it in a shorter piece, you can use parts of it. It gives you so much flexibility.

Clients just have told me over and over that once they’ve written this basic story, they are so much more clear and confident about the value that they have to offer. They are finally focused on the story they’re here to tell. They’re not trying to tell ten different stories.

My clients use this basic story as a reference piece in their library so that whenever they have to write a new marketing piece, they go back to this and they pull from it. They spend much less time writing than they did before when they had to write everything from scratch.

Both groups of my Put the Mojo in Your Message training have sold out. We will be offering the program again in November.
However, you can get all the content we’ve previewed here, and much more, when you purchase our home-study program: How to Say What You Do, When What You Do is Deep, Powerful, and Hard to Describe. http://soundbiteshaman.com/how-to-say

During the process of creating my Core Message with Isabel, I really struggled with the fear that there was no need for what I wanted to offer, that people wouldn’t want it, and that they wouldn’t pay me for it. I have to say, the process pushed every button I have!

Isabel’s approach to message creation goes much deeper than simply ‘writing good marketing copy,’ which is what most business owners focus on exclusively (a big mistake, I have learned!)

Instead, Isabel took me down a path of discovery to learn what I am here on earth to say and do… and as a result, I looked closely at what I really love, what I’m here to share, and the changes, feelings, and experiences I most want to create through my work. Writing from that Core Message is so much more powerful and compelling than simply ‘writing copy!’

Sue Rasmussen www.suerasmussen.com