Honest.

What I’ve discovered is that it’s not negative thoughts and the moods they produce that trip us up, it’s believing that we shouldn’t have them and trying to change them when we do.

Trying to change thoughts and moods expands them. When we innocently focus on processing what upsets us, we invest emotional and mental energy in the story, and before long the story is a novel.

Let’s entertain the possibility that the core stories that make us who and what we are have no inherent reality? That they are the product of thought in the present moment? I mean, in this moment right now, not the accumulation of thoughts over the years, for the past is past except when we think it into the present.

I’m not talking about questioning stressful thoughts. I’m talking about seeing that what we experience is always and only produced by our thinking in the moment.

With that understanding, changes in our thoughts and moods are like ripples on the surface of a lake. Nothing essential is altered by those ripples. Even if the ripples become waves, the nature of the water is unchanged.

Over the years I’ve noticed (with more or less understanding) that this is actually how it works. Irrespective of how long a painful thought or feeling has been around, there comes a moment when it is gone. Even the longest and most involved dramas unravel in the light of insight, leaving us momentarily alive to our essential wellbeing.

When we are alive to that wellbeing, we have access to inspiration and creativity. We naturally resonate with what is good, true, and beautiful, and that includes resonating with the people that I call our just-right clients.

A potential consequence of that resonance is new business. An invariable consequence is a continued feeling of happiness and success, and out of that feeling will continue to flow new ideas and fresh energy for growing your business.
That’s so much more pleasant than self-improvement.

Photo Credit: Michelle Hofstrand via Flickr

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Enjoy!

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But sometimes affirmations for success just don’t feel right, or, they feel okay, but they don’t work.

What’s up with that?

Into the Labyrinth

For centuries, wisdom seekers have worked with various symbol systems in their efforts to understand the relationship between intentions and results. One such symbol system is the labyrinth.

(There’s an interactive image of the labyrinth at Chartres here.)

What can the labyrinth show us about how affirmations for success work—or don’t?

Begin by imagining yourself entering the labyrinth with a goal or intention in mind. Let’s assume that how you state and embody the intention is going to affect your journey of transformation. In other words, how you start does make a difference to how you end up.

Now, imagine yourself walking the labyrinth, and ask yourself how the twists and turns, the straight and crooked segments of the path, might affect your original intention.
What is it like to hold this intention and affirm your goals as the labyrinth doubles back, and you appear to lose ground?

What is it like to find yourself  in a different quadrant of the circle than the one you wanted (or thought you wanted) to be in?

Cause and Effect of Affirmations for Success: It’s Not What You Think

Walking a labyrinth, like any transformational experience, means being willing to experience sudden shifts in perspective as we move toward our goals. Sometimes that means that our goals themselves will change.

And that’s where a simplistic approach to affirmations for success breaks down, because sometimes affirmations that made sense last year or last week aren’t relevant today.

Who we are and what we want as we emerge from the labyrinth can be profoundly different than who we were and what we planned at the start.

This means we need to be careful about how we understand the relationship between intention and result. That there is a relationship is apparent, but to imagine that the relationship is one of cause and effect oversimplifies and distorts what’s going on.

Because there are reasons why The Secret hasn’t made you a millionaire.

Affirmations for Success in Action

What does this mean for the use of affirmations for success?

First, trust yourself. If stating your goals in the present tense feels powerful and meaningful, then do it.

Second, observe yourself. Pay attention to what moves in you when you use affirmations for success so that you can respond to the process of transformation and collaborate with the ways you are being called to show up and co-create outcomes.

Sometimes it will feel right to declare an as-yet-unmanifest outcome as current reality.

Sometimes it will feel uncomfortable, yet useful because it challenges you to step out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes it will simply feel wrong.

Curiosity: The Master Skill

Whatever you experience, be curious.

What is it about this desired-for thing that feels unreal when you claim it, out loud, and in present tense?

Does this feeling point to some inner or outer work you need to do to narrow the gap between how things are and how you want them to be?

If an out-loud, present tense declaration feels powerful and true, how come? What are you knowing, being, or sensing that gives rise to this feeling of certainty?

What are the physical attitude or posture, mood, and set of beliefs that correlate with this experience?

Does this way of being feel sustainable?

Is there inner or outer work that wants to be done from this place?

Support for the Journey

We can know the value of being curious, but find it hard to carve out the time for reflection.

And when we do make time–or when insight comes uninvited–we sometimes misinterpret what we discover. Or we get it right but don’t follow through.

Having support can make all the difference, not only in helping you recognize and do the inner and outer work that is needed, but also by helping you celebrate yourself and enjoy the results of your efforts.

You can get that kind of support—a whole year’s worth—in two ways:

1. Get The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur, a program for growing a business that fits just-right. Click here to learn more about The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur, but don’t order it just yet.

2. Join Shaboom County, roadside assistance for the self-employed. (Members get substantial discounts on all my programs.) Click here to learn more about Shaboom County, but don’t join just yet.

Together, The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur and Shaboom County will give you more than enough information, support, guidance, and encouragement to keep you working on your business all year for less than $23 a month.

Why I said you shouldn’t buy just yet

The links above are to pages that tell you all about The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur and Shaboom County. I hope you’ll take a look. And if you like what you see, come back here, because for a limited time you can get both The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur and a year’s membership in Shaboom County for 1/3 less than their combined cost. This special offer is called The Accidental Entrepreneur’s Advantage. Click here to learn more.

Photo by giopuo / Giovanni via Flickr 

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When you work for yourself because you love what you do, your muse—your source of inspiration—matters. It connects you with a value, principle, or ideal that is bigger than you are. That lights you up and infuses your work with meaning.

But it takes more than serving your muse to make money doing what you love.

That’s because the magic formula isn’t “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” It’s “Do what you love to serve others, and the money will follow.”

Yes, your muse matters

You need your muse for your work to be meaningful and inspired. You need clients if you’re going to make a living. Fortunately, your muse is part of what makes you and your clients fit just right.

So how does it work?

Here’s the short version.

• You serve your muse by developing your talent and skills and by listening to inspiration.
• You serve your just-right clients by listening to them and making them offers that fit what they want.
• Your muse serves you and your clients by infusing your work with beauty and meaning.

You serve your muse

A muse is a source of inspiration. You serve your muse by making yourself the best possible vehicle for giving form and substance to the inspiration. You serve your muse when you take care of yourself. You serve your muse when you study your craft. And you serve your muse when you tune into the divine spark where it all begins.

If you don’t serve your muse in these ways, inspiration dries up. You feel lost and disconnected. Disoriented. Discouraged.

When you do serve your muse, you light up. You see ideas and possibilities everywhere.

It’s clear that for your business to work, you need to serve your muse.

You serve your just-right clients

Important as your muse is, it’s not the center of the universe for your just-right clients. For your work to translate to consistent income, your work needs to match what they want. You figure out how to do that by listening.

When you don’t listen to your clients, you end up lecturing. Telling them why they need your products or services. Giving them reason after reason why they should buy.

Boring. Off-putting.

When you listen closely to your clients and design your offers to match what they want, you don’t need to lecture. You can use your just-right clients’ exact language to describe what you do so that they immediately recognize their desires in your offers. They sell themselves because the fit is so good.

If you’re going to make a living, you have to serve your just-right clients.

Your muse serves you and your clients

When you and your clients fit just-right, your muse serves you both. What inspires you inspires them. What moves you moves them. What delights you delights them.

Your job is to find the intersection where what inspires, moves, and delights you perfectly matches what your clients want. Where that correspondence is clear.

How to get the money to follow

You get the money to follow the work you love by making your work relevant to your just-right clients. That means translating your muse into the forms and substance that best match what clients want.

You translate by observing and listening to your just-right clients. By finding out where your work is relevant to them. Where it fits in their lives. And how they talk about the issues, opportunities, and concerns that your work addresses.

Notice how your just-right clients want to encounter your work. Are they looking online or off? When it comes to using your work, what is most convenient for them? Speak to them in the channels they already use.

Give your just-right clients ways to know, like, and trust you. Give away useful information. Make yourself available if they have questions. And realize that it takes time to arrive at a place where you fit just-right.

Take care of your muse and your clients

If you don’t need to make a living, what you do with your work is up to you and your muse. But when you need to make money at work you love, your just-right clients are part of the equation.

Take care of yourself. Take care of your muse. And take care of your just-right clients. That’s how to make money doing work you love.

Language is the key to taking care

You can have the best intentions of caring for yourself, your muse, and your clients, but if you don’t have resonant language for what you do, you can’t get that across.

Developing that language is at the heart of The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right.

Goldilocks takes you step by step through a proven process of finding out what your just-right clients want (even if you don’t yet have clients) and putting it into compelling language.

Now Goldilocks is available as a home study course at 85% off the original price. Here’s a quick-and-dirty break down followed by a link to the full details. The content: Unchanged. Still 7 lessons including recorded classes, a professionally designed workbook, transcripts, and mindmaps.

The price: Reduced from $1500 to $220. Really.

Support: A year of monthly teleconferences for coaching and Q&A.

Community: A private Facebook group.

Bonus: Believe! A Guide to Practical Attraction. A complete home study course in non-magical thinking to create what you want.

Bonus: A new how-to video each month.

The course materials become available on May 8, 2013, and the first coaching call is May 15th. It’s backed by a 60-day no hassle guarantee. For more info click here:

Photo Credit: Lynn (Gracie’s Mom) via Flickr

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It’s called leverage, and it’s a nice idea. But does it work?

Well, yes and no.

A lever is a machine, and machines are limited

A lever is one of the five simple machines (the others being, in case you are curious, the pulley, inclined plane, screw, and wheel and axle).

A machine can only do what an outside agent makes it do. It can only accomplish a specific task in a specified manner. It cannot think, evaluate, reproduce, or respond.

With respect to leverage, this means that the intelligence to apply the leverage has to come from you.

In other words, the success of an investment is not implicit in the product or service on offer. There are no guarantees of success.

For leverage to work, you need a place to stand

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I shall move the world. ~Archimedes

You can leverage modest resources to reap great gain, provided you have a firm place to stand, a solid foundation.

But no foundation, no leverage.

If you don’t have a stable marriage, you’re not likely to massively improve your relationship by having a baby.

If you don’t have a certain degree of financial stability or know-how, you’re not likely to leverage yourself into massive profits by investing in a high-end business program.

Now let’s talk about scale

You often hear about leverage when someone is trying to enroll you in a big-bucks program. The message is that you need to make a big investment to get a big return.

That can work, if you are actually in a position to make a big investment. If you can get along without the cash or while carrying the debt until your investment pays off. Oh, and if you can afford to lose your investment in case it doesn’t work.

But leverage works really, really well when you think in terms of small increments.

It’s called bootstrapping

When you don’t have a lot to invest in your business, and you don’t have an outside source of capital, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Bootstrapping is using leverage in small increments. You grow by reinvesting your earnings in your business. When I started out, I reinvested 100% of my income to buy equipment and software, take courses, and hire help. For example, I hired a VA 12 months before I started paying myself.

By bootstrapping I built a very solid business without borrowing a penny or using credit cards. It was slow, sure, and solid. (And may I also say sane?)

Yes, you need leverage

If you want to grow your income, you need to use leverage. But you don’t have to make crazy-big investments of money, time, or energy. You can get where you want to go by taking reasonably consistent, considered action. Yes, it will take time, but you’ll be on solid ground as your business develops.

If you happen to be looking for a way to grow your business for a modest investment, take a look at my Goldilocks Strategy course. For about $200 (85% off the original price. You can read more about  choice at the end of this article.) you get an in-depth education in:

• How to not freak out or cave when you talk to prospective clients.
• What to do when you don’t know for sure what business you are in, or if you know but can’t quite describe it.
• Why talking about your work is so hard (it’s not just you) and what to do to make it vastly easier.
• How to make profound connections with prospective clients.
• What products and services to offer that your people will really, really want.

There’s more, but that gives you an idea of the scope. It’s a self-directed course with a year of monthly coaching calls to keep you going plus other support built in.

The Goldilocks course materials will be available on May 8th, and the first coaching call is May 15th. You’ll find all the details, click here.

A last word about deep discounts

I’ve written a fair amount about why you shouldn’t lower your prices, so what’s up with this discount?

Two things. When I surveyed readers about what would keep them from signing up, the answers were money, time, and overwhelm. The new offer addresses those things.

But to be honest? It just feels right. There’s a shift happening in my life and biz. I can’t say what it is just yet. But it feels right to release this work into the world in a way that many, many more people can afford it.

So that’s what I’m doing.

The link again, click here.

Check it out.

Image credits: Archimedes woodcut and Doc Martens: commons.wikimedia.org
“Just Right”: istockphoto.com

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Most of us spend a fair amount of time questioning ourselves, our choices, our capacities, and our decisions. That’s okay. It might as well be, given that we do it, right?

We can experience this questioning as self-doubt of the feels-pretty-crummy kind or as the kind of wondering that is the essence of creating.

This has been up for me lately as I’ve been wondering how best to rejigger The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right. Reflecting on the responses to the survey I put out last week and drawing on six years of sharing the work, I came up with a radically new design.

For a few days I was quite excited and happy about the new offer. I’d figured out how to cut the price by 85% (not a typo) while building in robust support.

And then, I started to think. Was the new design really right?

Wondering about what to create was turning into doubt about whether the creation was right. Collaborating with possibility was turning into worry about the outcome.

Back to wonder

As the saying goes, this is not my first rodeo. When I realized that wonder was turning into doubt, I did the sensible thing: my laundry. And while standing in the sun hanging clothes on the line, I remembered the wonder I felt when the new design of Goldilocks emerged.

As I looked in the direction of that good feeling, the experience of wonder increased. I realized that I knew all I needed to know: that I had a cool new idea and was enthused (en*theos) about putting it out into the world.

I can’t know what the response to the new version of Goldilocks will be, but I do know that it makes me smile.

Success lives in the immediate experience of wonder

Creating is in our DNA. We can’t not create. And part of creating is to wonder how to make something happen.

What we sometimes forget is that the success of a creative venture lives in the wondering, not in the outcome. So long as we have breath, there is the possibility—the inevitability—that we will create again. There is no such thing as a make-or-break outcome to creating.

The real question is whether we will experience the success of creating here and now or look for it off in the unknowable and uncontrollable future.

This week as you work on what to offer your clients or how to put an offer out into the world, remember the distinction between wonder and doubt. Go ahead, think things through. Just remember to look in the direction of a wonder-full feeling when it comes time to make your decisions.

What do you think? CLICK HERE to share your thoughts at my blog.

So, are you curious about Goldilocks?

Here’s a quick-and-dirty break down of what’s new about The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right followed by a link to the full details.

The content: Unchanged. Still 7 lessons including recorded classes, a professionally designed workbook, transcripts, and mindmaps.

The price: Reduced from $1500 to $220. Really.

Support: A year of monthly teleconferences for coaching and Q&A.

Community: A private Facebook group.

Bonus: Believe! A Guide to Practical Attraction. A complete home study course in non-magical thinking to create what you want.

Bonus: A new how-to video each month.

If you think you might want to play, click here: www.shaboominc.com/goldilocks-landing/

Photo of the Wonder Wheel by MA1216 via Flickr

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Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.

What’s going on when you put your work out there and you don’t get the response you’d hoped for?

When your thing doesn’t fly?

I’ve been thinking about this because recently one of my best things didn’t do as well as I’d expected. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. But first, let’s talk about how to manage for happiness even when your thing doesn’t fly.

Truth #1: It’s not personal

I know it stings when your thing doesn’t fly, but trust me, it’s not personal.

There are a kazillion possible reasons why an offer might not succeed. A kazillion because that’s how many possible responses your possible clients could possibly have.

Did you follow that? It’s worth rereading. Because not only are there a kazillion possible reasons, 99% of them are out of your control.

Note: not 100%. 99%. That leaves a handful of things you can control on your end, which leads to Truth #2.

Truth #2: Every offer is an experiment

Every offer you make is an experiment. Even if the experiment has resulted in oodles of sales in the past, it’s still an experiment.

In other words, you can’t control the results.

But you do get to control what you put into the experiment. When it doesn’t work, you get to change it up. You can play with the pricing, the design, the packaging, the timing. Preferably not all at once, or the experiment gets muddled.

(Caution: don’t go fiddling with your offers too fast. You need to give them a good try before making changes willy nilly. Otherwise you’re not experimenting, you’re shooting in the dark with blunt darts.)

Truth #3: You get to manage for happiness, or not

When you’re building a business around work you love, you presumably make offers you are happy to fulfill.

What may not be so clear to you is that there are almost always more happy ways to offer and deliver your work than you have yet thought of. One of the benefits of having a thing not fly is that you get to discover those ways.

The trick here is not to let temporary disappointment distract you from what I call managing for happiness.

Managing for happiness means looking in the direction of a good feeling about your business. It means coming at your next actions from a place of “What does this look like when I know that happiness comes from within and that I get to play it any way I choose?”

Truth #4: If you want to be in the game, you’ve got to stay in the game

Like I said at the top, one of my best programs didn’t take off recently. In spite of having sold out several times in the past, the response to The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right has been tepid.

I felt a lot of equanimity about it. I love the program. I was proud of the videos and webinar I did for the launch. I was delighted with the gorgeous new graphics and template for the workbook. Maggie and Lisa had been amazing to work with.

So I had no regrets. And for a couple of days I thought about just letting it go.

But then I realized that just dropping it would be more like resignation than acceptance. It would mean leaving the game.

I like to play, so that didn’t seem like managing for happiness.

How I managed Goldilocks for happiness

I asked myself what managing for happiness would look like when it comes to Goldilocks. And here’s what came.

Instead of trying to figure out how the heck I could get people to sign up, I asked myself a question at the heart of The Goldilocks Strategy: What do my people want?

It seemed clear: managing for happiness means asking that, so I’m asking for your help.

I’ve created a super-short (5 question) anonymous survey so you can tell me frankly your thoughts about Goldilocks. There’s even a place for you to say it wasn’t on your radar at all. It’s all good to know.

I imagine you can complete the survey in about 3 minutes, though you can write as much as you’d like me to know.

Here’s the link, click here.

No matter what your experience has been, I truly want to hear from you. And next week, I’ll let you know what I’m finding out.

UPDATE: Survey results are in, and the bottom line is that folks are concerned about money, time, and overwhelm. I’ve rejiggered The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right so that it is much less expensive (85% less), has a year of monthly teleconferences for support, and break-it-down-for-you emails every 7-10 days.

Photo Credit: dfbphotos via Flickr

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At first I thought my answer was somewhat frivolous. But when I mused about the qualities that happiness can bring out in us, I thought it might have some validity. Life has thus far shown that to be true.

38 years later Miles and I are ridiculously happy. I think that’s largely because we decided separately and as a couple that happiness matters.

There were some very rocky years for sure, but somewhere along the way, we each made a decision to pay more attention to and place a higher value on occasions of happiness than occasions of disappointment or hurt. We began to look in the direction of the other’s essential goodness. (Miles was way ahead of me there.)

I don’t know if he would put it this way, but we each decided to assume that the other was acting in good faith to the best of his or her ability at the time.

And then taking out the garbage became sexy

I distinctly remember the day I made a big deal out of Miles’s announcement that he had taken out the trash. In a flash of insight I realized I had a choice: I could dismiss his announcement as trivial (or worse, as a craven bid for undeserved credit), or I could tell him it made me hot.

I chose the latter. Yes, I was joking, but in that moment a truth came to light: The truth that an infinite amount of happiness is available when we look in that direction. The truth that the value and implications of Miles’s taking out the trash lay 100% in how I chose to hold it.

I said it made me hot, and then it did. (Not to worry, that’s the end of the personal disclosures.)

What this has to do with your business

When you work for yourself, you are in business. And being in business is like being married. You get out of the relationship what you put into it.

If you regard the business side of self-employment as a necessary evil, you’ll find plenty to dislike. It will be easy, even natural, to give power to whatever random negative thoughts arise. And as in a marriage, you’re likely to blame yourself as well as your business for what’s wrong.

It’s a vicious circle.

But when you decide to regard your business as if you could actually be happy together, the relationship changes dramatically. You begin to look at where your gifts and resources can serve your business and vice versa. Instead of asking why business is such a drag, you start looking for crumbs of joy.

And where there are crumbs, there are cookies.

When you choose to manage for happiness, things don’t magically go well, any more than they do in a marriage. But you won’t make the mistake of imagining that your happiness rests on externals.

When you look in the direction of happiness in your business, you will be happier in it. The happier you are, the more responsive you will be to the needs of your business and the more appreciative you will be of how your business enables you to do the work you love. You’ll be more creative and willing to be bold. When random positive thoughts occur, it will be natural to give them power.

It’s a virtuous circle, and it begins with the decision to be happy.

Photo by Lindsey B via flickr

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Illustration: istockphoto.com

Why do some businesses survive in tough economic times while others fail?

One explanation is that people always necessities, like groceries, but not luxuries, like diamond rings or massage. But that isn’t necessarily the case.

Still, if you look around you, you’ll see tons of evidence that people continue to invest in discretionary goods and services even when money is tight.

While grocery stores undoubtably have a priority claim on our pocketbooks, it’s not just our stomachs that influence what we buy.

Simply put, we all pay for what we value. That’s the idea behind what’s called value pricing. But here’s the deal (and the good news): You don’t have to persuade prospective just-right clients of the value of your work. Establishing value is a collaboration.

What Is Value?

Value is the difference between what a thing costs and the benefit that others perceive that it confers.

The cost of groceries gets measured against the value of nourishment and pleasure, and the grocer makes a sale.

How Prospective Clients Establish Value

It’s easy enough to understand how people determine the value of putting food on the table. But what if you’re a massage therapist or an image consultant? How do your people decide if your work is valuable enough to pay your rates?

While it’s true that they can’t eat a massage or wardrobe consultation, both of these “non-essentials” have deep seated value for the just-right client.

My friend Tom has back pain that used to interfere with his work. Now regular therapeutic massage keeps him flexible, fit, and productive. For Tom, massage is not a luxury, it’s job security. (He’s can also crawl around the floor with his kids again, which may be the bigger benefit.)

When Linda could afford shopping as a past-time, she thought hiring an image consultant was unnecessary. Now that she needs to dress professionally on a budget, she’s realized how much money she’s wasted on poor choices. Working with a wardrobe consultant has become a necessity.

So prospective clients know the reasons why they would pay for products and services like yours.

But they don’t always know that they know it. It’s your job to help bring those reasons to light.

You can learn how to do that in Five Keys to Conversations About Value below.

How Do You Get Clients to Talk to in the First Place?

Before you can have collaborative conversations about value, you have to find and connect with prospective just-right clients. How do you do that?

The answers to that question are at the heart of The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just-Right, a 7-part program with the sole purpose of showing you how to get clients that fit just right.

UPDATE: I’ve redesigned Goldilocks with a full year of monthly teleconferences to help you put the tools to work in your biz. Work at your own pace and start getting more clients. ♥

Five Keys to Conversations About Value

It’s one thing to understand the concept of value as a collaboration. It’s another thing to have the conversation that gets things going. Somehow, when we sit down to talk, a fog bank seems to move in. Or we get what golfers call the yips.

These five keys will help you navigate through the fog and prevent the yips.

1. Let go of the result.

2. Be willing to be surprised.

3. Ask questions.

4. Listen.

5. Check before drawing conclusions.

Let Go of the Result

The first and most important key a successful conversation about value is to let go of the result.

A conversation about value is not a sales pitch in disguise. The goal is not to make a sale, but to collaboratively reveal the value of your work so that the client can make an informed decision about buying.

No, not every prospective client will decide to buy or hire you. But I promise you that anyone that walks away from this conversation feeling heard and understood remains a prospective client and positive referral source.

Be Surprise-able

Even if you are crystal clear about the value you offer your just-right clients, be willing to be surprised.

You may be the expert in how your work solves problems and fulfills dreams, but your prospective clients are the hands-down experts in what that means to them.

So open your mind. Drop your preconceptions about value. Let the client surprise you. (And you can surprise them by really listening. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Ask Questions

Your job in the conversation about value is to ask questions, not answer them.

When you want to collaboratively establish the value of your work, imagine that you are helping a friend make an important decision. Instead of giving advice, ask questions that help your friend, in this case, a prospective client, articulate what’s most important to them.

• What do they want to achieve?
• What will that give them?
• Why is that important?
• And what matters most about that?
• What’s their starting point?
• What’s between where they are now and where they want to be?
• If they could have any kind of help they wanted, what would that look like?

Not only will this conversation reveal value from your prospective client’s point of view, it will be a goldmine of language and ideas you can use in the future to decide what to offer, how to package it, and how to describe it.

Listen

Forgive me if I sound pushy, but if you aren’t asking a question, your mouth shouldn’t be talking. And if you don’t know what to ask, silence can be okay, too. Show your prospective client that you are willing and able to really see them and their problems and dreams without trying to tell them what they need.

Only when they feel really seen do people become interested in how you can give them what they want.

Check Before Drawing Conclusions

During collaborative conversations about value, pause and reflect to prospective clients what you’ve heard them say. This shows that you are listening and that you care enough to really understand their points of view. It gives them a chance to clarify or elaborate. It will keep you from inadvertently imposing your thinking on theirs. And it will suggest new questions to ask.

Another cool thing? If you sometimes feel less than fully confident about the value of your work, you may discover that your prospective client is more appreciative of it than you thought.

Value Is a Collaboration

When it comes right down to it, the value of your work emerges from a collaboration between you and your just-right clients. What’s more, collaboration begins long before you are hired.

Start asking questions and listening to the people you’d love to work with. Watch the value emerge. And watch your client list grow.

Are You Ready to Get Better at Getting Clients?

The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just-Right begins May 8, 2013.

In other words, if this has resonated with you, and if you’re ready to dive into getting better–lots better–at getting clients, take a look now at Goldilocks now. Click this link to learn more. www.shaboominc.com/goldilocks-landing/

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