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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

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

rule of marketing

The #1 Rule of Marketing

 

Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind.” — Robert Collier

 

Earlier this week I was at dinner with friends where a variety of conversations were taking place at the table. My attention was suddenly pulled to a conversation about yoga.

Now, the truth is that yoga as a topic would not normally grab my attention. I think yoga’s great, but it’s not really a top-of-mind interest for me. Normally, my mind would have filtered this conversation out and my focus would have remained on the interaction I was already a part of.

However, this yoga conversation was different. My friend was recounting a recent experience where she ran a workshop for veterans to help them process trauma stored in their bodies through restorative yoga. She explained how one participant had a big emotional release at the end of the workshop as her body let go of anxiety and tension that had long been stored in her muscles.

That got my attention.

I immediately switched my focus to her story. Ever since I read The Body Keeps the Score last year, processing trauma through movement has been at the top of my mind as something that could help me and others close to me to improve mental health. Read more

Boost your revenue from any offer by 20%+ with this strategy

When looking for the highest ROI ways to grow your income as a thought leader, there are often low-hanging fruit opportunities that get easily overlooked.

These are opportunities that require little additional effort or work on your part and can be implemented with minimal changes to your existing product offers, marketing, and sales process.

Earlier this week, I was on a consulting call with the purpose of looking over a business owner’s revenue model to find just such an opportunity for her.

One stuck out at me right away that I would like to share with you because it’s something you can easily apply to your offers. In my experience, this technique boosts the income you generate from that offer by 20% or more.

In this case, the primary source of income for the individual on the call is high-end, high-touch coaching and consulting program where her clients pay for several months of training, personalized guidance, and hands-on feedback.

This offer costs several thousand euros. She doesn’t have any offers at lower price-points. As a result, this excludes a good portion of her list from being able to do business with her because they can’t afford it.

My advice to her was to add a second tier to this high-end offer, one that included the training, tools, and access to the community but didn’t include access to her guidance.

This would do two things. First, it would create an offer that is accessible to those who can’t afford the higher price. Second, it would allow her to make additional revenue from an existing program in a way that doesn’t require more time from her to maintain it. Read more