Allowing Your Expertise to Shine Through: Common Reasons that Keep Entrepreneurs from Moving Forward

In today's fast paced world we have access to more information than ever before, be it books, media or opportunities for education. And while it's great to have all this information and learning at our fingertips, it can sometimes be a detriment to us. In fact, for some people, it can be an excuse for them not to move forward in their business.

Two reasons like this I've heard recently include: "I'm just not sure I can be successful. I know I help people, but I need more experience." And "I need to get another certification [take another seminar/get another degree] before I can be an expert and really put myself out there."

My friend and client Michele PW was held back by these specific reasons. Michele is an example of someone with great expertise - she is one of the hottest marketing strategists around, writes copy and creates campaigns for very well known people that get results.

Michele started out as a freelancer, selling services. She got into infomarketing and had some really big successes, but she always had trouble doing it for herself. She came up with a couple of products, but none of them sold as well as what she did for her clients. Her belief was that the real money would be in copywriting, not her expertise.

"I knew people could make a lot of money selling products. I knew that in my head, but I didn't believe it for myself. I guess when you're doing copy for people, even though you're out there in the spotlight, you feel like you're still the support and behind the scenes," Michele says.

"The problem for me was that I was the expert who always needed to read one more book before I could call myself an expert," she explains. "I was so stuck on that and I think that's why I really didn't value selling my knowledge. I had people pushing me to do some sort of copywriting product and all I could say was, 'There are plenty of good products out there, what am I going to add to the mix?' Working with Lisa pulled me out of that and now I've had some very successful products. Now I see that I didn't value my knowledge. Then I wouldn't have said that was the reason, but looking back I see that now. A big part of working with Lisa was her support and being able to call her in my moments of weakness and angst about change. If you don't push through and have a number of people who support you, you'll just start spinning your wheels and never get out of it."

There will always be another book or blog to read or another degree or certification to be earned. There will always be another seminar to take or conference to attend. But at some point you need to realize that you ARE an expert in your field and you are holding yourself back - and not helping people you could be helping - by not allowing your expertise to shine through.

Entrepreneurs fail. It's as simple as that. Every single entrepreneur out there, no matter how successful they look on the outside, has failed. Yes, they are very successful, but for all those successes, they also have failures. There were things they tried that didn't go anywhere. But if you don't own your expertise and take risks, you're never going to have the big successes. Granted, you'll never have failures, but you'll never have success either...

About the Author:
Lisa Cherney is a Marketing Intuitive and President & Founder of Conscious Marketing™. For 15 years she worked at Fortune 500 companies and top advertising agencies. Lisa tells her story in her co-authored book “Inspiration to Realization,” available at http://www.consciousmarketing.com/ Conscious Marketing also offers workshops and coaching. Visit her website for more details or call 887-771-0156. (www.MichelePW.com) No. of Times this article has been viewed : 510
Date Published : Oct 17 2010

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Ways to Get your Business Moving

If you suddenly felt your business slowing down, you have to act fast before it is too late. You see, if you do not address the situation immediately, you will be losing income which will be harder for you to make your money roll. If you think you are going through a trough, do not wait until it is too late - invest in a good marketing program that is guaranteed to: 1) Stop the slowdown, and 2) Bring in the sales in the coming days.

If you are looking for a quick way to get your business moving, the key is to finding the people who have already started the buying process. What you have to do is zero in on the segment of the population who are actively looking for what you have to offer. How do you do that? Well, there are many fast and affordable ways to get to your customers who are in the buying process. Here are some ways to get to your target population:

1. Advertise Online. A lot of successful local businesses use online marketing campaigns to increase sales. As the years go by, the use of the Internet has grown exponentially. The Internet offers tremendous opportunity to get your product noticed by using paid search. After all, nearly 85 per cent of all Internet users perform online searches. If people are looking for a specific product or service, they will just search for the product; and if you have paid advertisement, your product or business will show up in the search results. For instance, if your customers are looking for personalized brochures and catalogs for example, your printing company, as well as the printing reviews of your print provider should show up in the search results.

The next challenge is how to show up near the top of the search results because as you may well know, people rarely go down the page or go the other result pages. The strategy here is to advertise using paid search on popular search engines like Google. This will make sure that your business or your products will appear near the top of the search results and receive maximum attention from prospects that are looking for a particular product or service like a professional and credible printing company for example.

2. Makeover your Website. Since we are talking about the Internet, let us talk about your website. If your website has not been reviewed for quite a while, this might be the opportunity to revisit your website and perhaps it needs a makeover. By equipping your website for search engine optimization, your site will go up in the ranking in search results. As stated previously, what you want to do is for your website to show up near the top, if not the top, of the result pages.

3. Give online Yellow Pages a try. By putting your business in an online Yellow Pages, you increase the chances that people who are looking for a particular product or service will chance upon your product. It is like making your presence felt in all available channels. This will cover all aspects of your online marketing strategy. You would definitely want to seize all available online opportunity.

If the going gets tough, the tough gets going. You do not wait for sales to pick up because it might not or it might take a bit more time. You have to be proactive and find ways to jump start your business. What you want to do is to build sales fast through the placement of effective advertising on effective platforms such as the Internet.

No. of Times this article has been viewed : 573
Date Published : Oct 7 2010

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