The Information Con Game

January 12, 2012 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

It used to be that information was scarce. You had to go to a library, or pay a researcher, to discover the nuggets of gold that you needed to know. Now ‘Google’ is a verb, as in ‘I’ll google that to find the answer.’ My 73-year old mother has figured out she can type in ‘How do I ___?’ and google will give her not just one, but 173,234,432 answers.

Because information was so scarce, in the old days (say before 1995) it was treated as precious. If you went to the trouble to get information, you treated it as valuable, and you made use of it. Now information is easy to come by. That would seem to be great, but it’s led to a new problem that I call the Information Con Game.

If you believe that information is as valuable as implementation, you’re conning yourself. If you believe that information = transformation, you’re conning yourself.

Let me be clear – It’s not that others are conning you about information. If someone says ‘I’ll show you how to make $50,000 in the next three months’ they may very well be telling the truth. (My clients have done this, so I know it’s possible.) But knowing HOW it was done (the information) is not the same as doing it (the implementation and transformation.)

Information is cheap. In order to implement the information, you need many skills that are unrelated to the information, such as perseverance, courage, and a willingness to act. You need tools to overcome what stops you. EFT Tapping is one tool that can help. There are others. But getting the success skills that you need is essential.

If you have the information that you need, don’t con yourself by seeking out more information. That’s an avoidance technique. It’s a great way to avoid taking action, to avoid doing the really scary stuff like putting yourself out there. Instead, find something that will give you the skills that you need to act. Focus on implementation.

Information won’t bring transformation. Only taking action can do that.

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7 Tips to Make This The Best year Ever

January 5, 2012 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

You’ve probably done it before. Started a year brimming with eagerness, chock full of good intentions. Then about February 5th, sometimes sooner, you run out of steam. Things aren’t looking as good as you thought they would. Maybe this year is going to be too much like the last year. And the year before.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Each year of your life CAN be better than the last, and your business can grow each year,  no matter what the economy. Here are some tips to make this your best year ever!

1. Set goals, and write them down.

Sound basic? It is, but only about 5% of the population has written goals. Interestingly enough, only 5% of business owners ever break six figures. Hmmm… Studies have shown that those who write down their goals are 93% more likely to achieve them. That’s worth being basic!

2. Create a ‘why’ for each goal.

Why do you want that particular goal anyway? What will you have or be when you get it? If you have a compelling ‘why’ for each goal, you’re more likely to be motivated to achieve it, even when it gets challenging.

3. Remove any goals that are ‘shoulds’ rather than ‘want to’ goals.

It’s time to get real. If you’ve been trying to lose that last 10 pounds for the past 10 years, it’s not enough of a priority for you. Let it go, and don’t waste energy trying to create something you’re not motivated to do.

4. Consider setting ‘process goals’ rather than ‘result goals’.

A ‘result goal’ is based on a result, for example ‘I will earn $100K this year.’ A process goal is based on actions you take, such as ‘I will make 5 phone calls a day to prospective clients.’ Setting process goals can keep you on track and persevering in the face of challenges.

5. Be realistic about your goals.

If you made $20,000 last year, setting a goal to make $500,000 this year is likely to set you up for failure. While it is possible, as an entrepreneur, to dramatically increase the amount of money you make from year to year, you want to set goals that keep you empowered, knowing they are possible. Stretching you a little is great, but have a good idea about how you might get there so you’re motivated to act.

6. Track your progress.

As a business owner, you should be looking at your books at least once a month. Paying that kind of attention to all of your goals – your financial goals, marketing goals, sales goals, and personal goals – can keep you from panic and having to take frantic action to stay solvent.

7. Celebrate every success.

Business is filled with ups and downs. As humans, we’re wired to focus on the negative, the painful, and what’s not working. When you put attention on, and celebrate what has worked, not only do you feel better, but you may be able to see more possibilities to create continued success.

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Help for the Holidays

December 22, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

In the midst of the holiday hustle and bustle, are you taking care of yourself?

I’ll admit, I sometimes get a little ‘Scrooge-y’ when I don’t do the right thing around this time of year, so I put together a little video support for you.

(Here’s a hint: It won’t just help your holidays, it will benefit your business, too!)

Really? One 5-minute video can do all that?

Yep! Check it out:

And Happy Holidays – you deserve it!

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Biggest Business Fear

December 8, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

Do those big business fears ever make you feel paralyzed?
I’ll never make it.
I have to get going, now!
I’m overwhelmed.
What do I do next?

They certainly affect me that way, sometimes. And tapping can help.

Here is a powerful, short tapping exercise that you can pull out anytime those business fears get too big.

It’s only 2 minutes long, but it’s packed with great stuff! It’s from my live event ‘Transform’ and after a bunch of people shared their fears, we tapped.

Use it when your biggest business fear is raring up:
When you’re afraid you’ll fail
When you’re afraid you’ll succeed
When you feel like you have to have it all done RIGHT NOW

So before you press play, identify your biggest business fear. Get specific, and take a look at it. How intense is it? Ready to tap?

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I’d have to sell my soul

December 1, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

If I want to fall in love with business, I’ll have to sell my soul.

I won’t be spiritual any more.

I won’t have that heart-centered approach that I love about myself.

It will all be about the money.

My values will be distorted.

I’ll become a Scrooge.

It’s certainly possible that might happen. After all, Ebenezer was pretty nice as a kid, and he had some bad years later. But he also had a huge misunderstanding about money, and business. He let fear guide his actions, rather than transformation.

If your belief about business is that you must be hard-hearted, callous and cruel, then you will shape yourself that way to do business. That would be pretty silly and unfortunate, but you could do it.

If your belief about business is that you make a huge difference in the world by fulfilling a desperate desire that people have for transformation, that’s a bit different. You’ll need a few additional beliefs along this one in order for it to work, such as:

It’s good to charge appropriately for what I do.

Telling the world about the transformation I provide is a benefit to people.

I’m a mensch when I offer my goods or services for purchase.

Getting these new beliefs installed usually means overcoming not just the old beliefs but the hidden fears: fear of rejection, fear of ridicule, fear of failure, and fear of conflict.

It’s overcoming these fears that’s the challenge. It’s the fears that are holding the old limiting beliefs in place.

Once you get all those new beliefs working together, you become a transformational entrepreneur – a Mr. Fezziwig, not a Scrooge. The good you do is not limited to the individual you happen to be in front of, but can extend to many.

And if that doesn’t warm your heart and redeem your soul, I don’t know what will.

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Creating a miracle

November 17, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

There is a joke that I just love.

A flood was coming.

One man of faith was offered a ride out of town, but declined saying ‘God will grant me a miracle.’

As the waters rose, he had to move to the 2nd floor of his house. People came by in a boat and encouraged him to leave with them. He said ‘No, God will grant me a miracle.’

Finally he is forced to the roof of his home with flood waters all around him, and a helicopter comes by and throws him a rope. He doesn’t take it, yelling ‘God will grant me a miracle.’

The man drowns, and shows up at the pearly gates really upset. St. Peter says ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about. We sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter!’

I see this all the time in coaching and motivational work, because they demand that we step up. They demand that we do things that are outside our current experience, and possibly outside our comfort zone. We have to take action even if the path doesn’t look like we thought it would.

I believe that there are many good training and coaching programs out there. Some are better than others, certainly, and some will resonate more with you than others will. However, the number one reason that programs ‘don’t work’ – that they don’t create the miracle – is because people don’t implement what they are told to do.

So here’s a quick test to see if you’re taking action to create your miracle:

  1. Am I clear on the steps or tasks that I’m supposed to do?
    Clarity is partly the responsibility of the teacher, trainer, or coach. However, if you’re in an interactive program, YOU have the responsibility to ask if something isn’t clear. Most trainers and coaches are grateful for feedback.
  2. Have I taken those steps, or done those tasks?
    This is the tough one. It’s time to look, without excuses, at what you’re implementing. Look at whether you’re running through a list of ten possible actions, not liking any of them, not DOING any of them, and then wondering why you don’t have results.
  3. What were my results?
    Measurement is SO important. If you tried something, what happened? How many times did you try it, and in what different ways? Specifically, what happened?
  4. What feedback do those results give me, and how can I use that to succeed?
    Most of us know when we try something and don’t get the results we’re looking for, why it happened. It might be that you didn’t give it enough energy, you had conflicting beliefs that sabotaged you, you were missing a critical element (like addressing the wrong market or speaking with the wrong language). This is the important point: If you know why it didn’t work, and can do it better, it wasn’t a failure. It was a learning experience.
  5. What steps or tasks did I NOT do, because they were uncomfortable?
    Sometimes just leaving out one critical piece can keep you from your results. Perhaps you need to do the last 5% of the work to have something complete to offer. Or it might be that you aren’t willing to try half of the options available to you, because they aren’t comfortable.

This work isn’t for sissies. It’s the work that it takes to succeed. Looking at yourself, being honest, being willing to learn, and being willing to do what looks like failure. When you get used to doing this, though, your results will be breathtaking. They might even look like a miracle.

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Too much clutter – of information?

November 3, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

Do you feel like your life is cluttered with stuff you don’t use?

Because entrepreneurs tend to be creative, mostly we have a bit too much clutter in our lives. It might be a full garage, or an untidy closet or junk drawer, or an overflowing bookshelf, but clutter is distracting and can create overwhelm.

Another type of clutter that’s becoming really dangerous these days is too much information, especially information that’s not being utilized. Since information is easy to come by, given the ease of google and the abundance of free resources, it can be tempting to clutter our minds with techniques and ideas. However, if we aren’t using them, having them around doesn’t serve you, any more than that broken egg-beater that you’ve been meaning to fix.

Most of the transformational entrepreneurs I know have studied some marketing and sales. They’ve cluttered their minds with free marketing and sales ideas that they aren’t using. And they still can’t do it comfortably!That’s a bunch of information that’s cluttering up your mental space, but not doing you any good.

The solution isn’t another standard sales training course that’s going to teach you 24 ways to close a sale – you’ll still feel sleazy, uncomfortable and inauthentic, and now you’ll have 24 new ways that don’t work for you!

Stop cluttering your life with more information that you can’t use – because it doesn’t resonate with you and isn’t in alignment with your values. Instead, you need to take some steps:

1) Identify what actually needs to happen in your business

What do you need? Do you need to hire an assistant, or structure your bookkeeping? Do you need to attract more clients, to be able to charge more to the clients you already have, to be able to sell more effectively to the people you talk to, or all three?

2) Figure out what is stopping you

If you start this step by saying ‘I just need to…’ you’re in trouble. There is a reason that you haven’t taken action up to this point, and it’s probably not laziness or ignorance. It’s just that you have an emotion (like fear or discomfort) or a belief (like ‘sales are sleazy’) that is keeping you from doing what you need to do to succeed.

3) Create a plan to overcome that obstacle

The subconscious, emotional mind is very good at sabotaging you from taking action you need to take in your business no matter how committed or dedicated your rational mind is to your goals. Put a strategy in place that will clear what’s stopping you. You may need new conscious beliefs that support your success, or you may already have the conscious beliefs and need to change the emotional beliefs. (Hint: you can tell if you have emotional beliefs that disagree with your conscious beliefs if you find yourself saying ‘I know I SHOULD market more, but…’)

You need to have your head and heart in alignment if you want to succeed authentically, with integrity – at least, if you want to succeed without too much struggle and pain.

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[Tapping Video] Overcoming Sales Objections

October 27, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

You probably know I used to hate sales.

Not just ‘dislike sales’, not ‘be a little uncomfortable with’ – I hated sales.

And the hardest moment was when someone would say ‘I’d love to work with you, but…’ and offer some big objection.

I would feel totally stopped, and not know how to respond. If I said anything after that other than ‘goodbye’ I felt like a sleazeball.

I’m guessing you might be in the same situation, so I made a tapping video to help you with just that problem – enjoy!

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Business Coaching, EFT - Emotional Freedom Techniques Tagged With: , , ,

Sales are Sleazy

October 20, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

If marketing is bad, sales are worse.

If marketing is sleazy and manipulative, sales is pushy, self-serving, inauthentic, and downright unethical.

But without sales, there is no business. How do we reconcile these?

If only there was a way for sales to be the hero of the story. It’s OK for us to fall in love with the hero, but only masochists fall in love with the villain. You fall in love with the villain, and you end up suffering, or abandoning your values for a few torrid moments of ‘Yes, I’ll buy from you.’

There is another way. ‘Sales are sleazy’ is a myth.

Transformational marketing and transformational sales have some steps in common. In both, you want to connect with your prospective client, and to show her you understand and acknowledge her pain. In both, you want to clarify the transformation that is possible, and to motivate and inspire your client in what she could do, be or have.

And then, in marketing, you encourage her to take a small step in the direction of transformation by connecting with you in some way.

In transformational sales, you invite her to step into transformation. You invite her to say ‘yes’ to her dreams, to regard herself as worthy of her desires, to believe herself capable of achieving what she longs for.

You hold the space for transformation to occur.

Everything has led up to this moment. The connection, the inspiration, the discomfort (yours and hers) – all of it has led to this question:

Will you step into transformation now?

Of course, your question will be different. It may be ‘Would you like to start now or next week?’ or ‘How would you like to handle the down payment?’ or ‘Are you ready to move ahead with what we’ve laid out?’

But make no mistake, what you are offering is transformation. Here. Now. In this moment.

It won’t happen without you. You are holding open the door, and everything she wants is through that doorway, in that room.

Your highest moment of service is when you open that door, and invite her in.

When you set aside your fears and ask, when you hold the space for transformation, when you believe in her, when you believe in yourself – that is your service. The transformation truly starts now. You have laid the groundwork with your transformational marketing, and the transformation will continue as you deliver your product or service. But this is the moment when everything truly changes.

Congratulations. You’ve fallen in love with the hero, and there will be a happily-ever-after.

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Care and Feeding for your Dreams

September 29, 2011 By Pamela Bruner Leave a Comment

Dreams are fragile things. They are birthed like butterflies, from splashes of colorful inspiration. If they aren’t given attention, they will fade and die, forgotten, very quickly.

However, there are other ways to destroy dreams. If your dreams are important to you, you want to make sure that you have adequate care and feeding in place, so your dreams not only live, but thrive. That they become the biggest expression that they can be – and YOU become the biggest expression of your dream, purpose and vision that you can be.

Here are a list of dream-killers:

1) Telling the wrong person about your dream. We all know there are people in our lives who encourage us, and those who feel it is their sworn duty to point out possible pitfalls in any plan. Tell your dream only to those who will encourage you, or keep it to yourself until it feels stronger.

2) Not giving your dream enough nourishment. Dreams are nourished with time – time spent thinking about them, brainstorming, researching, mindmapping, and visualizing. If you have a stellar idea, but don’t give it time, it will starve.

3) Pursuing too many dreams. Most transformational entrepreneurs have more dreams than they can possibly bring to fruition. It doesn’t mean you can’t have those dreams, but you can only pursue so many at one time, especially if your dream involves building a business. Write down all your dreams, give them a little mental exploration, but choose the ones that you will pursue with passion, time, attention and energy. Put the others in hibernation. If they’re important, they’ll come out later.

4) Trying to do your dream alone. When you’re ready to tell the world about your dream, enroll others to help you bring it to life. Having support in implementing your dream, whether it’s from a coach, a mastermind, a volunteer group of enthusiastic supporters, or an accountability partner can mean the difference between having it happen, or having it just be a long-ago idea.

So tell people who will support you, give your dreams time and attention, focus on the few that you really want to bring out, and you’ll manifest the business and life you’ve always dreamed of!

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