8 Action Steps to Break through the 5 Most Common Success Blocks

In my last entrepreneurial mindset article I listed the 5 Success Blocks that I’ve found are the most common stumbling blocks for many women who in every other sense are smart, savvy experts who work hard. Now I’d like to give you 8 action steps that can help you begin to shift. You can know every marketing strategy in the world. You can work hard and be darn good at what you do. But if these blocks stand in the way you’ll likely struggle and not understand why. I’ve been there. Breaking through is exhilarating.

Here are 8 action steps you can start practicing TODAY that can help you improve your ability to get the results you want in your business (and your life). They are not about marketing or social media, but about doing the inner work that allows the right marketing, clients and money to flow into your life.

1)      Make a list of what you’ve done that is extraordinary in ANY area of your life

• List it.
• Bask in it.
• Own it.

2)      Make a list of how you are valuable to others—clients, family, friends, the world.

• Write it down.
• Read it out loud.
• Acknowledge it.
• Own it.

3)      Write down which situations cause you to lose your sense of power to control outcomes and go from confident and competent to unsure or insecure.

An example would be if you have created an awesome product or scheduled a webinar and only a few people show up or you only make a few sales. I’ve seen that through people off track for weeks.

4)      Identify any OLD message or wound that causes this to happen. Just becoming aware of the message is powerful because you begin to see how it’s controlling you and you can kick it to the curb.

• When are you buying into this message
• Why?
• What is the trigger?
• Become conscious and aware each day for a week.
• Go back to owning your value by telling yourself the truth, which is most likely the OPPOSITE of your old message.

5)      Overcoming Stamp of Approval—ask yourself in each situation, what is the WORST that would happen if someone disapproves of my words or actions?

• Could you survive it?
• How many more people would love what you do because you took a stand or came from a confident place?
• How can you ignore the naysayers and start surrounding yourself with YAYsayers?
• Begin to accept that to step into the spotlight, you will not be“all that” to everyone.
• Feel aligned with your purpose. If you are fulfilling it you will connect with the RIGHT people

6)      Getting past “they can’t afford it if I charge more”

• What kind of person CAN afford it?
• Who says THEY can’t?
• Are you confident about the value you offer?
• Are you able to articulate it?
• Do you BELIEVE you are worth more money?
• How much money are you losing my undercharging?

7)      Letting go of Overwhelm

• Monitor how you spend your time for a week
• What % is spent on MONEY GENERATING tasks
• List rote tasks are not worth your hourly rate.
• Outsource them
• What can you change that you currently spend time doing in your business? What is siphoning off your time?
• Begin to value your time as precious

8)      Work on becoming a Money Magnet

• Create a Money Attraction Avatar who truly cares and encourages your success. How does he or she look, act and interact with you?
• Imagine that this person was your best friend, your confidant, the one who believes in you and encourages you to be the best you can be.
• Let her tell you how she will show up in your life when you offer value to others
• Give generously to open the giving and receiving flow
• Be aware of those negative Money Monster Messages that may be sabotaging you and making you believe you have to stay small
• Make an abundance gratitude list. We all have so much more than most people in the world. Look around you and list every single thing that provides you with comfort, health and nourishment. You’ll be amazed and you’ll start to feel abundance

Once you begin to understand that where you put your mental focus and your emotions is actually creating your results. If you choose, even unconsciously to focus on lack, worry, fearful thoughts and worst case outcomes, you will attract that and you will act as if that’s what you deserve.

If instead each day you CHOSE to try to focus on happiness, joy, abundance, and gratitude your actions, results and life will begin to make a seismic shift. This is a daily choice.

Please share your comments and what you are committed to changing so everyone can benefit.

Want to start a seismic shift in your business? I challenge you to do so if you’re ready. If you are I have a few open slots when we can have a private conversation. If you are ready for a real breakthrough and a prosperity plan, let’s talk. In less than 60 minutes we’ll get you started in a new, exciting direction.

For more information please visit http://www.smallbusiness-bigresults.com

Overcome These 5 Success Blocks and It Will Change Everything

I hope you enjoy this article in my entrepreneurial mindset series.

Lots of people talk about turning their passion and purpose into a successful business, but often there is a disconnect that seems to prevent them from really realizing that dream. It’s easy to see what needs to change for someone else, but difficult to see what is blocking you.

Most of us share similar core desires. We want to live our purpose, find joy in our work, change the lives of others, create financial freedom and have the time to enjoy our lives. We want to be respected, sought out, influential. We want to have our boundaries respected and we want to be able to stand in our power and be paid what we’re worth. Finally we want to create and generate abundance and inspire love in others. Money is simply a tool that allows many of these desires to become reality.

If you are frustrated because what you want is not what you are experiencing, it’s often due to the interference of one or more of 5 internal success blocks. Every one is fear based and can stop you from really soaring. Everyone faces them. Awareness is the first step.

Once you work on breaking through these blocks amazing things start to happen. For example, the exact marketing strategies that were getting minimal results suddenly attract wonderful high paying clients. The product with low sales (even though it got great client results) suddenly starts to attract buyers. And those are just a few examples of the real results I’ve seen with clients. Why? Because overcoming these blocks reveals the authentic you, minus the fear. And it sets up free.

What are the 5 blocks and how can they show up in your business?

1.      Struggle

When you feel like you can’t achieve success without struggle it often shows up as feelings of overwhelm, like you always have too much to do and don’t know where to start. You may end working too much, and it feels like a grind with little fun or joy. You may have lots of unfinished projects and little to show for your hard work. And you may continue doing the same thing even though it’s not getting great results.

2.      Scarcity

So many people are held back by their relationship with money—the only remaining taboo subject. I had to work hard to overcome this block, but the results happen fast. When you suffer with this block you may find yourself often saying “I can’t afford it”, even when you know it’s something you need. Money worries may dominate your subconscious thoughts. You may carry debt and search for free or low cost solutions that still don’t help you. You may undercharge, thinking your clients “can’t afford more”.

This often results in fear of investing in your business or yourself and in not having a solid money map for your business. It’s a “not enough” mentality that is costing you big time.

3.      Skepticism

Being skeptical is often the result of having been burned in the past. The problem is that if you don’t start to trust again, you will always feel victimized by others. Skepticism can show up as fear you won’t get what you paid for, fear that you are getting “ripped off”, believing that nothing will really work, even an unwillingness to believe the legitimate success stories of others. It’s easy for skeptics to make excuses, blames others for their lack of progress.

Real transformation happens when you take 100% responsibility for your success!

4.      Self doubt

Did you ever feel shame about lack of progress in your business? Did you wonder if people will really pay you for your expertise? You’re not alone. It’s called Impostor syndrome and it’s quite common. The problem is that you are not acknowledging the life altering results you can help your clients achieve. If you are struggling with self doubt you may over deliver and under charge, costing you thousands in lost income. You may fear failing but also fear that if you succeed you will alienate family and friends.

It’s time to start listing all the ways you are valuable to others and all the ways you have been extraordinary in your life.

Operating from the fear space will always keep you small and wanting for more.

5.      Stamp of approval

Are you often worried about what others will think of you? Do you try to make everything perfect before you’ll put it out there? This is deathly if you want to create lots of videos, emails, promotional materials and content. And that’s the only way you can gain visibility and lots of great clients. People who struggle with this block often fear criticism of any kind, they rarely make fast decisions and they put approval above success.

Think about Oprah. Are there Oprah haters? Sure. Are there millions of people who admire her, learn from her and follow her? Yes. If you want to stand in your power and lead, then you have to get noticed. Not everyone will like you, but most will love you. This takes courage, but the payoff is huge.

In my next article I’ll share some daily steps you can take to start the process of transforming and releasing any of these that are holding you back from a booming business.

If you are ready for a real breakthrough and a prosperity plan, let’s talk. In less than 60 minutes we’ll get you started in a new, exciting direction.

 For more information please visit : http://www.smallbusiness-bigresults.com

6 Simple Steps to Becoming a Successful, In-Demand and Financially Confident Expert

People often ask me about my journey to becoming a successful coach and entrepreneur generating a generous six figures per year. Did I just instinctively know what to do? Did I make the same mistakes they’ve made?

The answers are that sometimes I knew what to do either from experience or from listening to my inner voice or intuition, and yet, I still made so many mistakes I’ve lost count. But I learned from them and used them as a catalyst to do better and develop a better system that consistently gets great results.

If you are a coach, consultant or expert of any kind you may be struggling to get to the level of success you want. In fact, what stops most knowledge based business owners from getting there is that they are stuck in a dead-end business model with too few low paying clients and no idea how to change that. The result is-

• Charging too little
• Focusing on selling low priced or “one-off” products
• Over delivering
• Not enough subscribers or leads
• The wrong kind of clients
• Bright shiny object syndrome- going after the next new idea
• No financial freedom plan or business building strategy

If that has been your experience then it’s time to change what you’ve been doing.  The fastest path to creating a fun, passion based, lucrative business is to follow these 6 simple steps

1. Define WHY you are doing what you do. Of course you want to make more money, but why? Do you want a better house, more free time, more travel, to volunteer more, or to retire in comfort? Is your desire to impact and even transform the lives of your clients? You need to know because they WHY is what motivates and drives you.
2. Discover and commit to making the mental shift you’ll need to get there. Do you believe you could charge what you’re really worth and get it? Do you believe people will really say yes to your products or programs? Do you believe you could actually create financial freedom? If not, you have some work to do.
3. Figure out the Biggest, most in demand Results you can get your clients—the ones that will solve an urgent and frustrating problem. Then create the marketing language that communicates that result in way that makes people sit up, take notice and take action.
4. Create a premium package– a Big Results Offer– that commands a premium price and that delivers premium results as quickly as possible. Then start offering it right away.
5. Create a semi-automated marketing funnel that drives highly qualified leads to you every month. These are people that will eagerly see the value you offer and say yes to enrolling in your premium program. High value webinars, joint ventures and speaking are a great place to start.
6. Rinse and repeat each month

This simple formula can regularly generate five-figures a month in just 25 hours a week. Implementing it can bust through the income ceiling many knowledgeable experts experience.

For more information please visit http://smallbusiness-bigresults.com

Do You Love Yourself Enough to Make a Difference with Your Expertise?

You’re filled with the desire to help others. You have a system, product, program or process that can transform lives, yet you just can’t seem to get enough clients or make enough money to really say you have a successful business. It’s so frustrating.

You’ve attended numerous free training events, downloaded free e-books and reports and you study all the time. You’ve even tried every marketing tactic you’ve learned. Yet it’s still not coming together. You’re just tapped out. You’ve heard others explain how their system works and is the best and you see that they are successful but you are doubtful it will work for you because nothing has so far.

Sure you may be making some money, even getting by and paying the bills, but soaring would not be the word you’d use to describe your business.

You just don’t get it. So what’s wrong? Why is all you do not getting the results you want?

You’ve probably heard people talk about the importance of working on developing an entrepreneurial mindset, right? The truth is that all the knowledge in the world won’t pay off if your thinking and beliefs are not aligned with your vision.

I’ve seen this situation unfold more times than I can count and each time I see the same problem keeping women stuck, keeping them invisible and unable to change lives with their God given talents. And the reason is often the same. It’s not easy to hear, but the truth is that often they just don’t love themselves enough. They don’t believe that they too can join the seemingly exclusive success club and be seen as an influencer who transforms others. The problem is this—if you don’t believe in yourself, why would someone else believe you could really get them great results?

Every daunting situation we face is there to teach us something and as soulful, service based entrepreneurs our job is to look within and figure out what the lesson is and then set about to learn it. That takes courage, humility and real gumption. It’s not for the weak hearted. Difficult situations like money problems, stagnation, relationship problems or anything else that blocks us don’t mean we are unworthy, unlovable or a failure. They don’t need to be used as an excuse to hide the real truth. When you love yourself enough to be as nurturing with yourself as you would be with a child; when you look at a difficult situation as a self-learning and growth opportunity, not as proof that you were never meant to succeed and when you start doing the work to learn the lesson your world will shift, your business will shift and your self confidence will soar.

When you look in the mirror and see Divine inspiration and unique gifts staring back at you, you’ll smile and begin to invest in changing, moving and growing.

Recently my friend and colleague, Kathleen Gage wrote a blog post about the assumption many people have that they should be able to get everything they need to make more money and be successful for free, without investing a dime in themselves. In other words, some people think they can get great results with no “skin in the game”. We all know that’s not how it works. Similarly you have to do the work and invest the time and energy necessary to face challenges, learn from them, be determined to overcome them and change.

If you know what your purpose is and that the work you were meant to do is important, then why would you stay stuck taking the same actions thinking you’ll get different results? If you see yourself as loved and lovable, if you value and believe in yourself and your gifts, why would you make excuses for not doing whatever it takes to attain your dream? If you truly can see your dream for your business becoming real, you will have the quiet, but powerful inner confidence you need to get outside your comfort zone, take action and invest in change. You will stop hiding, stop remaining invisible, stop settling for just barely getting by.

Otherwise you will tend to blame circumstances, make excuses, postpone, procrastinate, give away your power to others, stall until it’s “perfect” , operate from fear and put up a false front.

When you are filled with self-love, self-acceptance and self-confidence, you take 100% responsibility for the results you get. You know that the decisions you make today will determine the results you get tomorrow so you take bold action. And you will know you are special. You will feel determined to serve others with your gift and you will feel worthy of being well compensated in return.

This is a mindset shift of huge proportions. To love yourself and put yourself first so you are full enough to nurture and help others, instead of depleted and overwhelmed is truly stepping into your power and who you were meant to be.

For more information  http://smallbusiness-bigresults.com