I’d like to offer a few insights about how you can weather these uncertain times in your business and fortify your business for the future.

5 Ways to Navigate These Uncertain Times

It’s been a crazy week. It feels like head-spinning news and changes are coming at us at the speed of light bringing with it a good deal of uncertainty, and therefore, anxiety.

To be honest, I’ve had a few moments where I’ve felt like throwing my hands in the air and screaming.

What’s the use right now of doing anything if the ground is going to shift underneath me every two minutes?!

Thankfully, after taking a few deep breaths (and occasionally throwing on my kickboxing gloves to throw a few punches), I calm myself down.

Today, I’d like to offer a few insights about how you can weather these uncertain times in your business and fortify your business for the future.

1) Use This Time to Diversify Your Business Model

The other day I was brought on a podcast to talk about the importance of having multiple ways to sell your knowledge and generate income. The audience consisted of a number of public speakers who were suddenly facing months with very little income due to canceled conferences.

If you’re in a situation where some of your income is evaporating, now would be a good time to use my Lean Launch Method to get something to market quickly, especially something virtual that can replace any in-person gigs that have been canceled. Read more

Here are four useful tools and techniques that can help you uncover your unique voice as a thought leader to stand out in your industry.

How to Uncover Your Unique Voice as a Thought Leader

In 1994, my brother and I started our first garageband. Spillway was our name (don’t ask me why).

We would set up in my parents’ basement and thrash about, banging the drums and crunching chords on the guitar, essentially knocking off of the popular grunge sound of the time.

Our first song was an “approximation” of a Stone Temple Pilots tune. Our next was a loose rip off of Rage Against the Machine.

Without a doubt, we sounded like hundreds of other garagebands playing in their parents’ basements, all of us borrowing liberally from the popular rock bands on the radio. But we had to start somewhere. This is the creative process of discovering one’s creative voice.

Much like writing songs, creating content and sharing your ideas online is an expression of your unique voice.

To find your own style, your own voice, you often start by mimicking the voice of others. You experiment. You put in your reps. Bit by bit you uncover the elements that make up the fullest expression of who you are, the things that set you apart from others who do or say similar things. Read more

I thought my launch would fail, but I know I had to keep going.

Doubt set in; I was certain my launch was going to fail…

My mind got the better of me and I started freaking out.

Earlier that day, I’d posted something to social media and heard crickets in return.

That was two weeks ago. I was promoting my mastermind group for coaches and consultants.

I’d already booked a couple of fantastic people into the program, but I wanted ten participants.

The scared “monkey brain” part of my mind was certain that the “flopped” social media post was proof I wasn’t going to find anyone else to sign up.

The monkey brain didn’t care that I’d done 70+ launches in the past, most of which went well.

It didn’t care that time and time again I’d filled programs despite experiencing “launch slumps” along the way.

The monkey brain was working hard to protect me by convincing me to cut my losses and move on before I failed.

Thankfully, I didn’t listen.

I kept going. Read more

The unspoken danger of business masterminds

The unspoken danger of business masterminds

Today, I need to share something that really bothers me about masterminds. In fact, this applies to give business advice in any situation.

It’s something I see frustrate a lot of business owners. It can even lead them down a path that is damaging to their business if they don’t know how to recognize this problem.

But once you know how to keep an eye out, you can avoid this pitfall and still get all the amazing benefits that mastermind groups offer.

(SIDENOTE: I have a few spots left in my mastermind for coaches, consultants, and other experts. Click here to get the details and apply.)

Once, I was sitting in a mastermind meeting where one of our group (I’ll call her Erin) was in the hot seat asking for ideas to generate more leads for her business.

Immediately, someone jumped in to share with Erin how they were doing really well with paid ads and sending leads to a webinar.

As soon as there was a gap in the conversation, another member of the group started talking about how much his podcast had been growing his email list.

It continued like this for the next fifteen minutes. Bit by bit, I could see Erin’s eyes glaze over. I knew this look. She was totally overwhelmed. But because she didn’t want to seem ungrateful, she wasn’t saying anything.

I see this happen a lot in masterminds. The problem is two-fold.

First, people want to appear accomplished and smart. This leads them to offer advice even when it might not be the best fit for the person they are helping. Read more

Do you ever suffer from this entrepreneurial malady?

Do you ever suffer from this entrepreneurial malady?

Putting yourself and your ideas out there for the masses can ironically be a lonely business at times.

You sit in your home office wrestling with decisions, wishing you had someone who could jump in the ring with you, even for a moment, so that you don’t have to bear the entire weight of those decisions alone.

You have the freedom of choosing your own path and yet you feel adrift in an ocean of possibilities with nobody to help you choose where to navigate next.

Even if you have a team, you can still feel alone as a leader with nobody to talk to who feels the same pressures, has the same kind of vision and understands the nature of your day-to-day journey.

To succeed, we all need fresh perspectives to shine a light on our blind spots.

We all need consistent feedback both to push us further as well as to remind us how far we have come.

We all need a safe place to share the real struggles of entrepreneurship and thought leadership with those who understand. Read more