Are you taking this opportunity for granted?

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I told her she was overlooking a huge opportunity.

I was on the phone with a client who wanted to build a personal brand as a thought leader in the homesteading niche.

She and her boyfriend recently purchased a plot of land. She was waiting to start the brand because they have a lot of work to do before they can move there.

I told her that would be a mistake to wait. Then I gave her the following advice.

“Capture everything you do, starting now. Shoot videos with your phone, take photos, and/or take lots of notes to turn into blog posts. But whatever you do, start sharing your journey online now. There so much you will be doing in the coming months that will be fascinating to the audience you want to attract.”

Building a fence around the property.

Setting up an address with the Post Office.

Researching what kind of solar panels to install.

All of these topics would make for excellent audience- and brand-building content.

One of the best places to find compelling content is in your day-to-day activities.

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When your brain is a real @$%&*

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It’s important to have practices in place to intentionally counterbalance that with noticing the good.

Think of one of your most vivid memories. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Was it a good memory or a bad memory?

When I was given this prompt by a friend, the first thing that came to mind was receiving a phone call from my brother telling me that my dad had passed away.

Research tells us our minds are more likely to remember bad memories than good ones. Scientists believe there are deep-rooted evolutionary reasons for this.

In other words, our brain can be a real @$%&* sometimes.

Perhaps this is related to why we are much more likely at the end of the day to dwell on the things that went wrong or didn’t get done rather than what we did well.

We’ve all had those moments when we doubt our ideas, feel like we haven’t done enough, or impostor syndrome gets the best of us.

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Do Your Intended Customers Have All Three of These Reasons to Believe (and Buy)?

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Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s perceptions about how capable they are at executing a course of action and handling given situations.

My seven-year-old daughter is away for a week-long sleepaway camp for the first time.

When we presented the idea to her earlier this summer, she immediately started dancing around and singing excitedly about what it would be like to be away from her parents for a week.

I was both inspired by her bravery as well as caught off guard by her eagerness to be rid of us!

Upon further investigation, we realized her courage originated from a show she’d recently watched about kids going away to camp for the summer.

Watching a story about kids her age having a rewarding experience at sleepaway camp had fed her belief that she would be fine being away and would enjoy the experience as well.

Your intended customers often need a similar dose of self-efficacy before they will say yes to working with you.

Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s perceptions about how capable they are at executing a course of action and handling given situations.

Your marketing can do a perfect job of getting someone to believe in you and your product, but if they still don’t believe that they are capable of successfully reaching the outcome, they won’t say yes and invest.

This is especially true if they’ve previously tried other solutions and failed to reach the desired goal.

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How to Stand Out in a Noisy Market

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How can you stand out in a marketplace where so many are saying and offering similar expertise as you?

The commonly echoed advice is to have a compelling Unique Selling Proposition. Which tells your audience why they should choose your solution over others valuable to them.

While there is truth to this statement, it takes the focus away from one of the most powerful ways to create a one-of-a-kind thought leadership brand and business.

Resonance.

Ultimately people will follow your message, support your work, and do business with you because of who you are, how you think, and how you make them feel.

This requires infusing your content and brand with your values, stories, opinions, and unique point of view.

The more you share these parts of yourself, the more your audience discovers the things you share in common.

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The Aligned Strategy Principle

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[av_video src=’https://youtu.be/Tz2SGnaz1kE’ mobile_image=’https://jasonvanorden.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Aligned_Strategy_Principle_First_Frame-1.png’ attachment=’5089′ attachment_size=’full’ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′ conditional_play=” av_uid=’av-2ee3sv’ custom_class=”] Download the Aligned Strategy Principle Diagram (PDF) Download the Vision Worksheet and Questions (PDF)