Business Development

Is It Time for Your Powerful Contribution?

by

I’m so excited about contribution right now. In a few months, I will finally be finished writing my second book, Strong from Within! I just completed mentoring a client to coach his clients more deeply. I’m also supporting two clients right now in employing more people locally.

More people living strong from within. More people receiving deeper coaching so they can make their contributions. More people doing work they love right in their own communities. I feel deeply honored to facilitate these contributions.

What about you? What do you know is your powerful contribution? Or next powerful contribution?

  • Would you love support in getting your book written?
  • Do you have a gift to give your community?
  • Might I help you coach more deeply?
  • Are you soul-searching to discern your next contribution?
  • How could coaching support you in making your powerful contribution?

With so many aspects of life seeming unstable right now, the world needs your specific gifts, your irreplaceable contribution.

Is It Time for Your Powerful Contribution?

If you’d like to talk with me about coaching you, let’s use the wonderful energy of the new season to plant your seeds and bring your contribution to reality!

Our coaching conversation would be my gift to you. If we both sense it would be a good fit, we can talk about how we could work together.

If we’re not a good fit, that’s okay too. At the very least, we’ll have had a great conversation about your important contribution!

I begin work with only 2 or 3 new clients each season. If you sense one of them might be you, schedule your coaching conversation and apply here.

To making the world a better place, one powerful contribution at a time!

Join the conversation ~ post your insights, feedback and experiences below.

What If It Is the Voice of God?

by

I made a big financial business mistake last year. I joined a program to teach me THE system for developing my own program without taking the time to understand the fine print and without noticing that several aspects of the program didn’t fit my values.

My StrengthsFinder Activator strength in its raw form has taken me to places like this before. I thought I had grown her up better than that. So humbling to still be so human. Oh my goodness.

Reflecting on what went wrong and how to go forward, I realized that I had forgotten to ask my Connectedness strength for input as I was deciding about the program. Several years ago, I had made Connectedness the Goddess in charge of all my strengths.

Connectedness tends to be much quieter than Activator. And she has direct, consistent access to God, Spirit, Source. If I listen.

Since getting out of the program, I have quit looking “out there” for the system. Instead, I’ve turned to my coach and to Connectedness to guide me to my perfect “system.”

It turns out my “system” isn’t a system at all. Instead, it’s instinctually following guidance. Specific, made-only-for-me, that I don’t even know I want or need guidance.

Following the impulse to clean up an awkward interaction with a previous client, which led to two new business opportunities.

Saying yes to going to the gym with a new friend when I had made a vow to never step foot in a gym this lifetime. Only to find out my body craves working out. I now love going to the gym faithfully twice a week. Who knew? For months, my family didn’t even believe I’d joined a gym.

My niece, Alisha, came to New Mexico to check it out for herself and had to take this picture of Ann in her new happy place.
My niece, Alisha, came to New Mexico to check it out for herself and had to take this picture of Ann in her new happy place.

Expressing a sadness to my ex-sweetie which led to a conversation neither of us can now remember how it went which led to us getting back together and creating an amazing new relationship that we fondly call 2.0.

None of these miracles happened because I asked God, “So, what do you want me to do today?” I simply followed my heart and intuition in the moment. Even when the guidance went against a vow I’d made, felt super uncomfortable or too vulnerable.

Ah, Connectedness.

Maybe that mistake wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe it was the quickest way to get me back to me. After many months of ruminating about the mistake, that’s the first time I’ve said that out loud. Thank you for listening.

Join the conversation – post your insights, feedback and experiences below.

Strong You, Strong Work

by

In the past few weeks, I’ve needed more support than usual from my own coach. And, most of my clients have needed more support from me. One day last week, I received two frantic emails in one day. The subject line of one of them was: Help!

In the 20 years I’ve been coaching, I’d never received a “Help!” email before that. I’ve been wondering what’s in the air.

And then I realized what might be more productive: let you know a bit about how I can help.

AStrong-Buffalo

Buffalo medicine includes abundance, manifestation, generosity, protection and courage.
Artist Karen Windchild. In Eldorado, New Mexico.

 

Whenever you’re ready, here are 4 ways I can help you:


StrengthsFinder

1. Strong Work:
I can’t believe I get paid to do this! audio program
Imagine spending more of your work time fully engaged and feeling fulfilled . . .
When you focus and leverage your strengths, you’ll advance your career or get clients to hire you! Click to learn more.

2. Strong Couple
StrengthsFinder Coaching with me
What would it be like to enjoy more peace, love and understanding in your romantic relationship? When you each know and honor your own and each others’ strengths, that’s exactly what happens. Click to learn more.


Coaching

3. Strong from Within Transformation Forum, group program
How would your life be different if your strongest relationship was the one with yourself? When you focus on yourself, all areas of your life and business improve. Give yourself and the world the gift of more of you! Click to learn more.

4. Work with me one-on-one.
(For established coaches and business owners.)
I have a limited number of coaching opportunities available for established coaches and business owners who want to make more of an impact. When you commit to your greatest contribution, miracles happen. If this sounds like you, email me at Ann@AnnStrong.com, put One-on-One in the subject line and tell me about your Big Dream. I’ll reply to schedule a Coaching Conversation for us to determine if we’d be a good fit.

What about you? Have you needed more support? Been supporting more? What are you noticing?

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below …

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life

by

Awhile back, as I was working with a client around the growing pains of her business, she noticed that she’d come to accept that there wasn’t any time for her personal life. Because that was her thinking, her life had become putting out one fire after another.

This alerted me to look more closely at my own thinking. For most of the past year, I’ve been telling myself that “the world” is too much for me. As a sensitive empath, it’s challenging for me to feel all the chaos. My solution had been isolating myself from the world more and more.

Recently, I realized I could shift my thinking to something more life-affirming.

I have this wonderful job in which I get to support people in proactively creating their lives and their work. My clients are willing to look within themselves and courageously create what’s important to them. It’s such a privilege to facilitate their transformations.

While I still don’t get out into the world much, I do feel better about my life because I’m thinking about how I AM contributing rather than what drains me. I’ve also given myself permission to spend more time alone in nature, reminding myself, yet again, that it restores me. I don’t need to judge it.

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life
When I think about this land and this rainbow as benevolent friends,
I feel happier and more accepting of my life as it is.

So, what about you? What have you been thinking about? What do you notice about how that has become your life?

Post your comments, experiences and insights below…

What If You Didn’t Hate to Sell?

by

Right now, several of my clients are looking at how to sign up more clients.  They all feel challenged because they either hate to sell, wish they didn’t have to sell or both.  Maybe you can relate?

So, we’re looking at their love of deep meaningful conversation.  We’re coaching around how they love to know what’s really going on for potential clients.  We’re diving deep into how those people’s lives and businesses would change, even transform, if they hired my client.

So what about you?  If you reconsidered selling as a deep, meaningful conversation, what might shift for you?  If you realized that finding out what’s really going on for someone might be an opportunity to offer your help, how would that feel to you?

What If You Didn’t Hate to Sell?

Photo credit: Harli Marten on Unsplash.com

If you had these wonderful conversations with your whole focus on the other person and her world, might that help take your self-conscious focus off your feelings about “selling”?

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below . . .

How to Love Putting Yourself Out There Even If You’ve Hated It Before

by

Most coaches, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and small business owners hate marketing and sales. And, it doesn’t take long for them to no longer be in business.

The ones who stick with it and grow a thriving business realize that great marketing and sales isn’t about them, their company or their service. The same is true for you. Your super effective marketing and sales is not about you. Let me repeat that: it’s not about you.

When all of your marketing, sales and conversations with potential clients focuses on them – the potential clients – you may just find yourself having a great time.

Why did you start your business in the first place? What do you want, really want, for your clients? Why do they want what you have to offer? How does your service or product make their life better? Way better?

How to Love Putting Yourself Out There Even If You've Hated It Before

If you notice you’re talking about yourself, your training, your awards, your invention, your process, your program, your cool product or your excellent price point, stop yourself mid-sentence. Apologize. Then start over and ask them about their problem, needs, hopes and desires.

After you’ve had all potential client conversations that way for awhile, then let me know how you feel about marketing and sales . . .

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below …

This Will Make You Get Your Business Back on Track Now

by

If you don’t get your business running smoothly, which is worse, you not making the unique contribution you are here to make or your potential clients not getting the value of your unique contribution? Who wants to have to answer that question?!?

So here’s the thing.

When you can articulate with crystal clarity WHY you do what you do, your WHY will push, pull and drag you to resolve whatever’s in the way of your thriving business.

My WHY:
Inspiring and urging us to freedom
from our innocently self-created prisons
so that we may be more fully ourselves
and make our unique contributions to the planet.

Many of our self-created prisons were innocently created at a time of unresolved loss. Sometime when we were super young and felt abandoned, unloved or worthless. Other times, later in life around a break-up or a death.

If you’ve experienced a recent break-up, death or loss, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s unresolved. You’re grieving and have the opportunity even in the grief to find the good.

So what about you? Do you know, absolutely know, your business can be more, serve more?

If so, I’d love to offer you a Business Back on Track breakthrough session. There’s no charge for this session ~ it’s my gift. Click here now to book and apply.

We’ll get on the phone for 45 – 60 minutes and specifically look at where you are now and where you’d like to be.

If I feel you might be a great candidate for my brand new 10-week Business Back on Track by Receiving the Gift of Loss program, we can talk about that at the end of your session.

This Will Make You Get Your Business Back on Track Now

Because it isn’t for everyone.

I help business owners who:

  • Do extraordinary work, providing a needed service.
  • Approach life and work in a light, playful, open and deep way, even through broken-heartedness.
  • Are decisive and committed to their own transformation and making the greatest contribution of their business, while using updated technology like eGoldFax providing e-faxing services for their enterprise.

If you believe it’s possible to find the genuine gifts in challenge and/or loss and allow them to transform you and your business, then book and apply to be considered for one of the Business Back on Track breakthrough session.

As always, post your comments and experiences below …

What Do Your Clients Really Want?

by

As professionals, we have a tendency to talk about our services in terms of our tools and processes. Our clients don’t care about how we do what we do. They want to know that we can help them get to what they desire. And to the deeper desire under that desire.

The more you deeply listen to what your potential clients and clients tell you, the more clearly and accurately you will understand their desires and their deepest desires under those desires.

If you’re a business coach, your clients might talk about making more money, doing more fulfilling work or getting more focused. For each client, what is beneath those desires? There are as many answers as there are clients.

Maybe one client wants to make more money to ensure her daughter can go to the college of her choice. Why is that important to her? Maybe she feels it’s her job to do all she can to set her daughter up for success.

Maybe another client wants to make more money to retire sooner. Why is that important to him? Maybe he would love to devote more time to his passion of restoring old trucks.

Maybe another client wants to make more money because she’s single and she wants to take good care of herself.

What Do Your Clients Really Want?

I have a deep desire to make more money so that I can spend even more time with my family and friends in beautiful, spacious natural environments.  (Taken Jan 18, 2017 from the top of Beaver Creek ski area on my 25th annual ski trip with my 3 sisters.)

If you’re a chiropractor or massage therapist, your clients might talk about feeling better or paying more attention to their bodies. What’s underneath that desire right now? Maybe they’ve had a health scare, maybe they want a health partner rather than trying to figure things out on their own or maybe they want to be more pro-active and self-sufficient by learning more about their health.

The more you ask potential clients and clients something like, “Tell me more about why that’s important to you,” the more you can understand their deepest desire and the more you can help them fulfill them.

What’s your sense of how you might go deeper with learning what your clients desire? I’d love your comments and insights below.

What Is the Best Way to Easily Sign More Clients?

by

Shift your focus.

Inevitably, when I get into the nitty gritty with one of my clients about what’s in the way of them signing new clients, the root of the issue is some variation of self-focus and self-consciousness.

I hear things like:
“I don’t like to ask them to become a client.”
“If they want to hire me, they’ll ask me.”
“I’m not good at sales.”
“I don’t want to ask them to pay now because their first session isn’t until Thursday.”
“I don’t have my website up yet.”

Where is the focus? I, me, my concerns, my ideas.

What Is the Best Way to Easily Sign More Clients?

As the sun does not concern itself with whether or not it feels like rising today, so too can we show up and serve without concern about nonsensical internal chatter.
(Photo credit: Eric Saltmarsh, Eldorado at Santa Fe)

What if we shift the focus of ourselves and onto the potential client?

Why might the client need us to ask them to become a client? Because change is scary. They are hiring us to support them in making changes. What happens if we start supporting them now by asking them to become a client so they can receive support throughout the change process?

What happens for the client if we wait for them to ask to become a client? They find many clever ways to procrastinate, forget, resist and wander away from the very changes they would love to make.

What if you quit thinking about how good or not good you are at sales and instead put your focus on serving the client? Would it serve them to sign up with you now? Then sign them up.

If the person in front of you has told you they want to become a client and scheduled their first session for Thursday, then have them seal their commitment to themselves by having them pay now.

A client is not signed up until they pay. No exceptions.

And, if they aren’t signed up, they’ll find many reasons to change their mind about meeting Thursday. Take that fretting of the table for them. Now.

And, what does having your website up have to do with your clients’ needs? If someone is in front of you now, ready to change, sign them up. Whether you have a website or went for your walk this morning.

If you would love to serve more clients and make more money in the process, then take your focus off yourself. Put your focus on the needs and concerns of the people in front of you. Be prepared to be amazed by how many new clients you sign!

As always, I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

Where Is the Sweet Spot for Growing Your Business?

by

Last week I attended an “Intentional Connections For Business” in Albuquerque with two of my friends who are also coaches. When we left the event, I realized that the focus had been deeper conversations, which had been wonderful.

What was missing was an easy way to stay connected and further the conversation. The event had been billed as the opposite of typical networking. To make sure we understood, the flyer included a graphic of a business card with a red circle with a slash through it to communicate “business card–free zone.”

While I understood the intent, I knew it had gone too far to the other extreme when I saw my friend, Karin, writing people’s contact info on the edge of a handout. I took a different approach and didn’t exchange info with anyone because I thought we weren’t “suppose to.” Despite it being a no card exchange place, I did manage to get the name of Catdi Printing which is a business card printing company from one of the businesses. If you are not into the idea how about Metal Business Kards where you can exchange high-quality handouts with the information about you and your business. 

As we drove home that evening, we all three realized we’d received value from the deeper connection and mindful structure of the event and felt stifled by the artificial boundary around networking and business cards. 

102616astrongblogpost400x22

I find the sweet spot in growing my business often tends to be the beautiful mix of two extremes.

We want to do business in an authentic way with people who have similar values and we want it to be easy and natural to continue the conversation. That lead to a rich conversation among the three of us about how we could each grow our businesses in a heartfelt and effective way. We spoke about many companies which inadvertently led me to mention this https://www.linkedin.com/company/gds-group Linkedin profile of the company which I’d hired to do all my marketing.

For me the sweet spot involves sharing and serving freely, generously having conversations to see if coaching with me is a great fit and directly asking for the business if it is.

What about you? What specifics create your sweet spot?
If you haven’t thought about it like this, what might help you gain clarity?

I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose“)