Comments on: Why Your Great Big Brain Won’t Run A Business

By: Why Your Little Bitty Brain Will Try to Wreck Your Business | Laurie Foley

Why Your Little Bitty Brain Will Try to Wreck Your Business | Laurie Foley — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:44:48 +0000

[...] post I promised a follow-up to Why Your Great Big Brain Won’t Run Your Business. The teaser was about how to provide the best service that you can. I was going to tell you all [...]

By: Susan

Susan — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:51:19 +0000

Thanks Laurie … and Allison, Cath, Maura for your input. Gets me thinking (that’s usually a good thing). Great analogy about the gift wrapping!

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:33:44 +0000

@Allison – PS: Thank you for jumping in on the comments! A big juicy treat to see you here.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:32:50 +0000

@Allison – I think you’re articulating something that MOST service professionals struggle with. One approach is to give up (the fantasy of?) trying to serve all audiences and reach out to the niche of your most responsive groups or where you feel most passionate. (Trust me, the “others” will still find you – and hopefully beg you to include them as clients! – but your message can be so powerful when directed to a niche.)

Talking to your fans (since you clearly have them!) is also a great way of refining your offer message. They will tell you what they liked and how it benefited them if you ask them.

I love what you are offering!

By: Allison

Allison — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:20:50 +0000

This is great, Laurie. I find that my work is applicable to so many different scenarios / situations, that it’s hard to articulate that in one meaningful “mission/vision” statement. Curious to know if others have dealt with that same issue and how. I give learning objectives / outcomes for my work – but finding ways to be specific to a certain audience is tricky as my work is definitely applicable to all audiences. Thoughts?

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:08:48 +0000

@Maura – What a wonderful image you create. Now I’m feeling a little busted on my very poor real life gift wrapping skills. But you motivate to improve – as always! Thanks.

By: Maura Conlon

Maura Conlon — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:08:39 +0000

It’s an art form to communicate to others what it is you have to offer. It’s a bit like having a present to give for somebody’s birthday….the present is one thing, but wrapping it takes “giving” to a whole other dimension — there’s the sense of marvel and intention and excitement both as one wraps the gift and as the receiver then unwraps it. Thanks Laurie for your post.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:31:41 +0000

@Cath – It’s very helpful to me to hear your ideas about different providers, different tools. A great example – thank you!

By: CathD

CathD — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:41:26 +0000

Great tips, Laurie. Especially for us folks in the personal development industry. We live on our own planet, immersed in psychobabble and woo woo, and we do lots of self-development work on ourselves and have all these awesome, life-changing experiences. And then forget that a lot of people are pretty unfamiliar with that world, or might even have had some bad experiences in that world. So you can’t assume they’ll understand what you’re talking about when you offer just “life coaching.” From my experience of hanging with different life coaches, and being coached by different coaches, there’s a vast diversity of different perspectives, tools and styles. You’ve gotta tell your people what your’s are. And if you don’t they either don’t have a clue, or they assume that perhaps you aren’t really sure yourself what your perspectives, tools and styles are.

Great tips! Looking forward to chatting on Tuesday

Cath

CathD’s last blog post..Your Mess is Your Message