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Author: David Newman

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development Sales

Let’s Not Talk About This

Negativity.

Pessimism.

Sadness.

Cynicism.

Enough already.

Acknowledge the current hard reality and uncertain conditions we’re all working under?

Sure – yes – please.

It’s important.

We’re not delusional and we’re not in denial.

Things are bad.

AND they’re going to get better.

And they’ll get a whole lot better, a whole lot sooner if you…

Refocus on your gratitude.

Reboot your enthusiasm.

Reimagine your future.

Redraw your plans.

Reinvent your business.

Reignite your team.

Restart your entrepreneurial engines.

Reconnect with family and friends

Rekindle your joy.

Rediscover why you started this crazy, wonderful, amazing business to begin with.

And then…

Begin again.

Be radically generous and radically helpful.

With purpose, heart, and the spirit of serving others.

Go, go, go!!!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Skills

7 WTFs for You

What does my focused mind like to do?

Five things:

1. Sell stuff

2. Help our clients sell stuff

3. Record videos about selling stuff

4. Talk to my smart friends about how THEY sell stuff 

5. Make up funny titles for your enjoyment :o) 

Here’s what made me think of this:

WTF = Wants To Fail. 

Who in the world wants to fail?

Here’s what I mean…

Are you already successful? Good!

By all accounts, including your bank account, you may be ‘successful.’

But it’s very possible that the brand of success that you created has a price which can best be described with the saying, “Nothing fails like Success!”

Imagine yourself after your initial success…

Speaking 50+ dates a year at good fees; coaching dozens of senior executives a month; selling 10-15,000 books under your own steam; consulting and running seminars for your roster of Fortune 500 clients…

BUT today…

You are working way too hard…

And there’s no time to market your services, develop new products, write more books, or live your life!

After reaching your initial success, you’re now trapped by it!

If you see that, but don’t DO something about it – well then you Want To Fail

That’s one flavor of WTF…

Here are 6 more… 

But before we even get to that, for those of you that this particular article resonates with – let’s help you reboot, reignite, and reimagine your business for its next level of success. 

1. Won’t Try Failing – if you’re not willing to try new things (and fail at some of them), you’ll never dial in your success ingredients or get different results

2. Whines Too Frequently – self-explanatory (I hope!)

3. Will Too Flaccid – you need an iron will and a crystal clear vision of where you’d like your business to GO in order to get there via the shortest, surest, quickest path

4. Worse Than Failure – the only thing worse than failure is giving up on your dream before you ever get the chance to succeed

5. Wait Til Friday – procrastination, delay, and denial are not the path that will get you to ANY worthwhile destination. No more waiting. Now is your time!

6. Whatever That’s Fine – settling for whatever business falls in your lap or whatever referrals you occasionally get isn’t a survival nor a growth plan – it’s an abdication of your entrepreneurial dream.

Don’t settle.

Don’t wait.

Our time is shorter than we think.

It’s game time – you’re primed – you’re pumped – you’re ready.

Let’s DO THIS.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

Think vs. Doing for Your Marketing Success

As a marketing mentor for consultants, speakers, and experts, I’m often asked some variation of the following questions:

  • What’s more important – a focused marketing plan or consistent marketing activity?
  • Do I need to change my marketing strategy?
  • What should I be doing more of – and less of – to get more clients?
  • How do I know the kind of marketing that will work for what I offer?
  • How can I stop spinning my wheels and do a FEW simple things consistently to generate leads, prospects and sales?

Here’s my answer in very sophisticated and technical marketing lingo:

“Wow… I dunno.”

Now before you dismiss me as a complete marketing moron, let me put that insightful statement into some context for you.

If you don’t know who you’re marketing to, what they want, what they’re willing to pay for, and how to position yourself as the “Ah – at last!!” solution they’ve been looking for, then these questions will merely:

  • Confuse you
  • Scare you
  • Piss you off

And it’s hard to be a successful entrepreneur when you’re running around confused, scared and pissed off all the time.

So stop it.

The first thing you need to decide is – which do YOU need more of?

A new master plan (more THINKING)?

Or some healthy ass-kicking to IMPLEMENT (more DOING) what you ALREADY know you need to do?

My advice?

Follow the Teddy Roosevelt principle:

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” 

If you want some strategic help with that then check out https://www.expertprofitformula.com/

If you need a little more DOING, then…

GO ALREADY – start doing the work!

But that means you need to STOP procrastinating and “getting ready to get ready” until…

  • You get your next professional certification…
  • You finish writing your book…
  • Your kids are a little older…
  • You build your updated website…
  • You have a few more clients…
  • You start making more money…

Hello?

Can you SMELL the stinky pile of rotten excuses suffocating you with their disgusting stench?

Do you need a rock-solid marketing/business STRATEGY?

The short answer is screaming YES with racing stripes and flames coming out the tailpipes.

Do you need a 60-page marketing/business plan with charts and graphs and financial projections for the next 5 years?

NO, you do not.

Do you want some help in seeing what ingredients you might be missing – and how to start closing those gaps and improving those aspects of your business that will bring more and bigger checks in the door?

Now is the time. More thinking. More doing.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

Imagine Yourself

 

1. Imagine you’re focused

2. Imagine it’s working

3. Imagine you’ve mastered marketing

4. Imagine you truly enjoy selling

5. Imagine clients must qualify for you

6. Imagine you’re worth premium fees

7. Imagine you have unlimited prospects

8. Imagine money flowing easily to you

9. Imagine punching people in the face with value

10. Imagine your money worries fading away

11. Imagine a clear game plan that you execute on daily

12. Imagine your business doubling, then tripling

13. Imagine working only when you want

14. Imagine doing only work you want to do and delegating or outsourcing everything else

15. Imagine you are #1

16. Imagine you’re a rock star in your industry

17. Imagine you’re booked solid

18. Imagine you have your pick of high-profit projects

19. Imagine moving from five figures to six figures – or from six figures to multiple six figures on your way to seven!

20. Imagine speaking to hundreds of people regularly

21. Imagine partnering with other experts whom you look up to as role models and now are lucky enough to call friends

22. Imagine generating thousands of web visitors

23. Imagine building a huge tribe of loyal followers, fans, and subscribers

24. Imagine doing this all in 18 days, 18 weeks, 18 months, or if you’re really slow and silly (like me) 18 years

25. You can do it.

Do your future self a favor:

Start.

Right.

Now.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Sales Skills

Stop Waiting to Be Picked (And Kick Some Prospecting Butt)

STOP waiting to be picked…

Are you tired of playing the waiting game… hoping that a good-paying client will drop in your lap from out of the blue?

Are you submitting “calls for speakers” and waiting to be picked?

Are you sending out consulting or coaching or training proposals that are met with deafening silence?

Are you searching for the next cool tool, directory, or service that will magically open doors to more leads… only to be let down and disappointed when yet another “guru” doesn’t deliver the goods?

I’ll tell you what makes me sad…

Watching great speakers (like you, perhaps?) waste YEARS thinking they’re building their business… when all they’re really doing is playing the waiting game that will keep you stuck, powerless, and reactive.

You know what I hear as the most common complaint among speaking-driven entrepreneurs like you?

Here it is — “I just can’t find enough good leads who have budget to hire me!”

Problem is… that’s not REALLY the truth.

Your problem might be even bigger, namely…

If I gave you 10 great leads right now – the right people at the right companies or associations who have the right budget and who OWN the problem you solve…

You wouldn’t close a single sale.

Why? Because either:

a. You wouldn’t reach out at all… (you know who you are)

OR

b. You would cold call them or pitch them or send some generic marketing material that they’d instantly delete…

OR

c. You would try some overly elaborate, complicated CRM sales sequence and send them all sorts of canned messages, emails, articles, PDFs, videos, and other nonsense that is totally irrelevant to them and would quickly become a nuisance.

Frankly, I’m sick of watching smart, dedicated entrepreneurs let go of their dreams because they didn’t have the right strategies, tactics, and tools to make it.

I’d much rather see you choose yourself – get back in the driver’s seat of your results – and kick some serious butt!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Sales Skills

This Is the No-Ego Zone

Onto today’s topic du jour… EGO.

As speakers, consultants, and experts, we MUST take ourselves out of our marketing messages.

Nobody cares about YOU.

The only thing they MIGHT care about is you IN TERMS of THEM.

What problems can you help them solve that others can’t, won’t, or don’t know how to?

How are you different, better, faster, smarter, cooler?

Not in terms of YOU but in terms of what matters to THEM and THEIR company,

THEIR team,

THEIR career,

THEIR association,

THEIR members,

THEIR franchisees,

THEIR leaders,

THEIR salespeople, etc.

Mike Thomson came into our mentoring program as a terrific speaker and coach – but he was all about “I, me, my” messaging and he couldn’t even see it at first.

Listen to his story here.

The moment he flipped his marketing, messaging, and sales conversations from “I, me, my” to “You, you, and you” – everything started to click.

Fees went up.

Repeat and referral business took off.

Sponsorship deals started to close.

Everything that mattered to him – fees, respect, relationship, and freedom and scale in his business – came about when he flipped the switch away from “me” marketing and toward “client-centric” marketing.

THAT was what landed him at the top of the heap for high-fee speaking, training, consulting, and sponsorship deals like never before.

Even though he thought he had it all figured out and had been fairly successful for 30+ years.

If a rock star like Mike can make a switch like that, what could YOU do with your business with some expert guidance, direction, and revenue acceleration?

Here’s where to find out more: https://www.expertprofitformula.com/

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Personal Development

5 Habits of Interesting People

What makes someone interesting?

Or – as they say in marketing lingo – a person of interest to others?

It’s a combination of factors, really… and here are five of them for your consideration:

They are not vanilla

They’re quirky, pugnacious, determined, and they don’t give a rat’s ass what the rest of the world thinks. (They also don’t mind using terms like “rat’s ass” in a blog post.) Bottom line: wolves don’t lose sleep over what sheep think of them. Think Donald Trump or Bill Clinton. How vanilla are YOU?

 

They are articulate

Love ’em or hate ’em, these folks can articulate a point of view. Opinionated, loud, proud, and never dull. The sound bite “frequently wrong, never in doubt” was made for them. Think Dave Chapelle or Rachel Maddow. How quotable are YOU?

 

They stand FOR certain things

And they stand AGAINST other things. They energize their followers, antagonize their foes, and polarize the rest of us in the middle. Sound bite: If you don’t risk turning SOME people off, you’ll never turn anybody on. Think Howard Stern or Wanda Sykes. What stand are YOU taking?

 

They build movements larger than themselves

No matter how big, loud, rich, and famous they are – they’re building something bigger than themselves and strive to make an impact beyond themselves. Think Oprah or Bill Gates. What’s YOUR movement?

 

They don’t seek media – they ARE the media

They are tastemakers, movers, shakers, interviewers, and relationship-builders. They don’t wait for the media to come knocking – they are more likely to post videos, write articles, and interview others to feed their tribe a steady diet of top-notch content. What media did you create today?

I showed this list to my friend, Jeffrey Gitomer, the King of Sales, and he added a few more:

  • they are attractive – not necessarily pretty
  • their words make you think
  • their ideas inspire you to take new and better action
  • they make you want to connect with them so that you don’t “miss” anything
  • they make you happy to be in their presence (virtually or in person)
  • you will travel to see them
  • they inspire YOU to become more interesting
Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

Is Your Expertise “Essential”?

You know it is!

And I know it is.

But do your clients know how essential your programs, services, consulting, coaching, and training are to their survival and success?

And how recession-proof is your expert-based business?

  • Is your content a must-have or a nice-to-have?
  • Are your distribution methods subject to cancellation and postponement?
  • Do you have a real strategy or just a bunch of tactics that work less and less well

During this entire crisis, we only lost 1.6% of our annual revenue.

Not to brag – but we are ESSENTIAL to our clients and to their ongoing success.

Why?

Did we just sit on our asses, fat and happy, and keep doing business as usual?

No – in fact, it’s quite the opposite…

I’ll be brutally honest – our old business came to a halt back in March. Total implosion.

Zero dollars coming in from the old offers, programs, and services.

So how can we be down only 1.6%?

Because in March, we had $110,000 coming in from our new offers, programs, and services.

And because we made drastic changes and huge shifts in:

  • What we do
  • Who we do it for
  • How we talk about it
  • How we market it
  • How we sell it
  • How we price it
  • How clients and prospects perceive it

This all comes from being able to rapidly shift three pieces of our business ANY time we want to or need to:

1. Clarity (who you are, what you offer, why it’s different)

2. Focus (who you want to serve, what problems you want to solve)

3. Decisions (where to find great prospects, what to sell, what to charge)

Want to get that superpower for your own business? 

If you’re ready to launch (or re-launch) your expertise-based business in turbulent and uncertain times, read about our brand new offering Expert Profit Formula.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

11 Commandments for Experts

1. There’s no good time. Now is the time. What are you waiting for?

2. Put out your best material. For free. Do you want to be SHARED or SCARED?

3. YOU may be your biggest obstacle. What would happen if you got out of the way?

4. Stop STARTING things and get more into DOING. What can you do today—right now?

5. A few may wish to see you fail. A lot more are rooting for your success. Where is your attention?

6. Forget the word vision. Better: What do you SEE in your future?

7. You’re aiming too low. How can you elevate your sights, your fees, and your value?

8. Stop blaming others. It’s ALL your fault. Move on—what’s next?

9. A bend in the road is never the end—unless you fail to turn. Where do you need to turn?

10. It’s not what you think it is. And it’s bigger than you think it is. Why not embrace that?

11. There are no silver bullets, secret sauces, or magic beans. Now what’s your plan?

Oh, and if you want a better plan – and to become a better entrepreneur of your expertise, read about our brand new offering, the Expert Profit Formula. You’ll love it.

Which of these Commandments for Experts would you’d like to improve on the most?

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Personal Development Sales

Speaking is NOT Dead

Too many of my esteemed competitors would tell you that speaking is dead – time to move on.

Here’s what that argument sounds like:

You used to be a speaker, huh?

Gosh – I guess Covid-19 wiped you out.

No events – no meetings – no training.

Bummer – so here’s what you need to do:

  • Set up an elaborate video studio in your house. Buy a ton of gear that you have no idea how to use
  • Start doing $49 webinars instead of your $7,500 keynotes
  • Launch complicated funnels, write these huge sales pages for your $197 online course (you have one of those, right?), and crank out 15-part autoresponder emails to hammer your poor prospects until they buy or die
  • Start doing Facebook ads. The more you spend, the better. Leads, baby, leads – that’s where it’s at

<STOP>

Wrong.

Speaking is just one distribution method for your expert-based business.

We’ve always mentored our clients to diversify their distribution methods:

  • Speakers can consult, coach, and work with corporate sponsors
  • Trainers can create webinars, build online courses, and facilitate
  • Coaches can do group coaching, virtual masterminds, and councils
  • Consultants can sell video series, license their IP, and host CEO roundtables

Any expert who only has 1 profit center is at risk.

That was true before Covid-19.

And, naturally, it’s true now.

You can’t be a one-trick pony in any economy.

The secret?

Diversify while still specializing.

You have a speaking-driven business – NOT a “speaking” business.

You’re in the IDEA business.

And your clients need your ideas now more than ever – online, offline, on video, in person, on webinars, in groups, and privately.

Even if you call yourself a “speaker,” is that the business that you’re really in?

Is the speaking business dead? What do you think?

In this training I help you uncover your 3 critical success factors: Clarity (who you are, what you offer, why it’s different); Focus (who you serve, what problems you solve); Decisions (marketing tools, how to find prospects, get profitable fees) – sign up here <<<