Bill Baren Blog

I don’t want a job.  I have never wanted a job, and I’ve never had one.  In the past, I have often found myself feeling like what I am doing is a job (not recently thankfully) and that my boss is not so nice to me.

I have been a traveler on the journey of transforming my business from a job into the deepest reflection of my internal desires for years.

In simplest terms, my desire for my business is to do what I love, in a way that’s congruent with my deepest values, and with people I love working with.  It’s a pretty simple concept, yet the realization of that dream of mine has been my practice for years now.

I’m grateful that in recent times, I have been able to do exactly what I want.  I have been creating exactly the kind of programs and products that I am excited about and ones that create a huge impact.

I have been able to liberate my time to do only the things I love - writing, coaching,  delivering tele-trainings and designing my business. All of this to maximize my ability to be of service and offer my gifts to the people I am meant to serve.

I have been able to work ONLY with clients that I love and who totally resonate with my teachings and my coaching style AND I have had the privilege of partnering of some of the best minds and hearts in the business space.

Underneath all of this, it’s not just a walk in the park. I’m expanding my comfort zone and often that’s very uncomfortable.  But I know that everything I long for is just outside my comfort zone.  And to tell you the truth, it is even more uncomfortable to me to know that I am wasting my gifts.  So I always give it my all even if it’s difficult.

The place I have had struggle in my business is with my schedule.  I am now extremely productive.  I can get more done quicker than almost anyone I know (my business partner, Patrick, is amazing at that, too).  And at the same time, my desire to give, be of service AND be available has meant that my schedule is constantly filled-up.

So I am continuing to work on refining my way of being in my business that allows me to give fully without the demand on my schedule increasing.  This is the part of my personal growth that my business is moving me towards.

Why am I sharing all of this?

#1 - I want you to be inspired to play bigger and ALLOW your business to help you create the kind of life you truly want.
I want you to know that you can make the kind of money you want to earn.
And make the kind of impact you crave for.
You can feel great and expansive in your business.
And create the kind of schedule and lifestyle you want to create.
And I want you to know that you need to set a strong INTENTION for this to happen, and have a commitment to intentional action.  That’s the only reason I have been successful.  I am not more talented than you.  I am not more of a natural at what I do than you.  So I know that if I can do it, you can, too.

#2 - My life and my business are far from perfect.  I may seem like I’ve got it all together.  I don’t.  I have a lot of things together and figured out.  On the other hand, I still struggle in certain areas of my business and my life.  But I know that because of my commitment to my own breakthroughs that I will have the big shifts that will allow me to continue to create life and business I truly want.

So I want to invite you to commit at that same level (that’s 100%) in areas that you are currently struggling or simply tolerating in your business and in your life.

I recently learned from a mentor that struggle is effort with negative energy (resistance). If you can remove the negative energy, then effort can be enjoyable.

Enjoy!

I’m proud to announce a contest where one business owner will receive a FULL scholarship to my upcoming Client Mastery Blueprint program.

(In case you haven’t read up on what Client Mastery Blueprint is all about, you can do so here: http://www.ClientMasteryBlueprint.com/earlybird)

Why am I giving away a full place, when there are a very limited number of places in this program and this program will sell out (last time it sold out a week early)?

I was completely touched and inspired by the actions and messages I received from Monica, our scholarship winner from the last Client Mastery Blueprint group, so I know how much participation in this program can be a catalyst in your life.

So I’ve decided to set aside a place for someone who is having a challenging time with their business, but has the burning desire and passion to succeed.

All of the coaching, step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources in this program are designed to help you make a big leap forward in your business. I know if you invest your time, energy and resources into this program… and you commit to IMPLEMENTING, and not just learning…. this program will give you the incredible support you need to GROW!

Here’s What To Do

1. Post your entry in the comments section below, answering these 4 questions:

I. What specific results do you want for your business in 12 months?
II. What are the 2-3 biggest challenges stopping you from getting the results you want?
III. What are at least 3 benefits Client Master Blueprint will bring to your business and your life?
IV. Why is it that you should be chosen?

(NOTE: Be sure to put include your email address when you are filling out the comment form, so that we can
contact you).

2. You can post your entry as text or as a YouTube video. We know that some people are better at writing, some are better at live speaking. Just be sure to include a blog comment with your YouTube link.3. I’ll review all entries and select the person that communicates the clearest vision and most compelling motivation for making a big step forward in their business.

3. I’ll review all entries and select the person that communicates the clearest vision and most compelling motivation for making a big step forward in their business.

4. Timing: post your entry in the comment section down below by midnight, Thursday July 1st.

I’ll select the winner and let him or her know by Friday, July 2nd - hopefully you’ll be the one!

One More Important Thought

This scholarship is intended for a business owner who really needs it – and will do the work to get maximum benefit from this program.

So if you are in a financial situation where you can afford the tuition, please invest in yourself and reserve your spot. This program is going to be FAR more valuable than the investment to participate. To register: http://www.ClientMasteryBlueprint.com/earlybird

What You Win

You win a FULL scholarship for the Client Mastery Blueprint gold level membership (this program is worth $10,278).

If you win, be prepared to follow through and be an active and fully committed participant in the Client Mastery Blueprint program.

This is an amazing opportunity to reap all of the benefits of a 6-month business growth program and receive hands-on coaching, step-by-step training filled with practical how-to guidance so you can attract all of the clients that you want while doing what you love. I’m teaching my own system for attracting and retaining clients so you’re going to get exactly what you need to make a big jump forward and generate more revenue for your business.

If you haven’t read up on what Client Mastery Blueprint is all about, you can do so here:

http://www.ClientMasteryBlueprint.com/earlybird

What this all boils down to: you’ll be learning the same strategies, and action steps I’ve used to create a business in which I brought on 4 other coaches to help me serve all of the prospects and clients I attract. This is a gift that I can’t wait to share with you.

Good luck!
Bill

P.S. Go ahead and do your entry now - even if yours doesn’t win, I’ll honor your intention and commitment with a special gift.

So no matter what happens, you win!

Have you ever had this experience?

You learn a new word that you seem to have never heard of before and all of a sudden you start hearing and seeing that word everywhere.

Is the word being used more now that you’ve learned it?

Or…

Are you simply noticing it more because you’ve increased your possibilities by learning a new word?

When you open your attention to new things –> you increase your possibilities

When you’re stuck, it simply means that you’ve gotten into a rut of looking at the same things over and over again.

When you widen the range of what you pay attention to and then begin to change your actions accordingly, you shift.  You get unstuck.

I call this “The Perception Principle.”

This perception principle is at the heart of why certain business owners stagnate or fail and why others achieve success and create businesses that allow them to have financial freedom.

When you put your attention on “what works” in successful businesses, including your own… and you expand the scope of what you notice, learn and apply from what works… your business grows, your confidence soars and your stress disappears.

Here’s a list of areas that I find most business owners need to pay extra attention to:

• Your Audience – knowing your audience and their needs and being able to articulate it
• Your Promise to Your Audience – knowing what you’re promising your audience that they are actually willing to invest into
• Your Business Model – figuring the optimal way to set up the packages, offering and money flow in your business
• Your Marketing Flow – understanding and optimizing the entire flow of how you attract and retain clients
• Your Team – continually finding ways for you to do what you love and let others take care of the rest
• Your Systems – stopping the need to constantly reinvent the wheel by creating ways to get great results EVERY time
• Your Self – total commitment to mastery in your areas of expertise, including knowing yourself and getting better at being YOU

It’s not always easy to notice NEW POSSIBILITIES in each of these areas.  And it certainly is not easy to commit to devoting time and energy to working ON your business in this way.  Yet, the more you pay attention, the more you can see your business with new eyes, the more your business expands to include new opportunities for increased revenue, better teams, greater partnerships and making more of a difference.

My job, as a business coach, is to continue to expand your perceptions of new possibilities in each of these areas.  And I want to continue to find the best avenues to do that with you.

~Bill

As a business coach, I get a LOT of questions from very diverse business owners.

One of the most frequent questions is this:
“I’m very good at what I do… so why aren’t people hiring me?”

Is this happening with you?

If so, I am going to share with you three of the biggest mistakes people make when they are having an enrollment conversation with potential clients.
(By the way, “enrollment conversation” is another way of saying “initial consultation” or “sales conversation”)

MISTAKE #1 – Promoting your services before your potential client gets clear on what they REALLY want.
The consultation is about your potential clients and their needs, and not about you. So be sure to take a substantial part of your consultation to ask questions to understand you potential client’s needs before you offer solutions.

When you understand their deepest wants and needs - and I mean what’s keeping them up at night - then you’re in a great place to offer your services as a solution.

If you aren’t establishing the “Gap”, you’re going to have a hard time getting hired! The “Gap” is the frustration that potential clients feel about the chasm between where they are now and where they want to go with their life, business, health, web site, etc.

MISTAKE #2 – Trying to solve the potential client’s problem during your initial consultation. The consultation is not the time to help your prospect solve a micro-problem they are currently having.  It’s an opportunity for them to see much greater opportunities for themselves and for their business and to establish you as someone who can help them close the gap.

Here’s why this is a mistake. Often when you give them 1/20th of a solution to their problem, they think they’ve already received the solution from you and go off to implement it on their own – without hiring you.

This is not the best way you can be of service to them, since their problem is only partially solved. And it will certainly not land you the client.

And this isn’t just an issue for coaches – it’s often true whether you are a web designer, business consultant, healer or wellness practitioner, professional organizer, etc.

MISTAKE #3 – Not using a consistent system for your enrollment conversation.
When you’re having a conversation with a potential client about working together, is it something you do spontaneously, without a script or agenda? Does it feel kind of random, and you’re uncertain if your conversation is going to work? You may even feel like the conversation with your potential client is going well, but then they don’t hire you. And you don’t why.

If this is the case, I have to ask you, do you have a “system” that you are using in every sales conversation?

I am not a systematic guy by nature.  In fact, I have often been allergic to systems.

But after a while, I couldn’t deny that when I developed a system for enrolling clients during a one-on-one consultation, used it every time, continually made it better – the results spoke for themselves. My results jumped from a 0% success rate to a place where now 80% of prospective clients hire me.

If you are making one or all of these mistakes in your enrollment consultations, don’t despair!

Just make a conscious effort to change how you’re approaching your clients and holding these conversations.

And consider learning a more systematic approach to having enrollment conversations, such as my “Master of Enrollment” program.
Before you know it you these conversations will flow with ease, and you’ll allow new clients to say “yes” to you.

That was an exciting call on becoming a master of enrollment last night!
The outpouring of emails has been amazing, and I loved the passionate questions on the Q&A after the call.

I’d love for this to be a place where you can share with me and with others what you’ve learned!

If you missed the free call, it’s not too late! You can get it here.

Take a minute and share your thoughts on one of these 2 things:

(1) Share a learning, insight, or action you’re going to take, based on last night’s call
(2) Explain your biggest challenge when it comes to enrolling new clients, whether one-on-one, in a teleseminar, or speaking to groups. I want to make sure I’ve covered every question and every aspect of this in my new program.

Leave me your comment below, and thank you for your help!

I’ve got a wish.

I wish I could erase a word from your vocabulary.

That word is perfection.

I know I am being dramatic here and it’s not really the word I want to erase, but the baggage that comes along with it.

When we’re attached to perfection:
• We spend a lot of time learning… not much time implementing
• We procrastinate … and procrastinate…
• We spend too much time making it just right (and it’s still not perfect anyway!)

Here’s the thing – whatever you’re doing will never be “perfect” until you try it out in real life with real people!

So here’s my favorite motto:

Imperfect action is better than no action.

Taking lots of imperfect action is what gets us new clients and new business.

I want to share a success story to inspire you to imperfect action.

Last month in our Client Mastery Blueprint program, I was teaching the art of mastering enrolling conversations that result in increasing the number of prospects that say YES to working with you.

I gave a participant a basic script for what to say in a sales conversation.

Instead of waiting months to get the script perfect and after almost “wimping out in the last moment,” she leapt into imperfect action right away and used the script with a prospective client.

She stayed open and relied on her curiosity to get connected to her prospect.

And by the end of the conversation, it was her prospect who asked if she had any packages she could offer her! YES, this imperfect conversation turned into her client committing to working with her for the next 5 months.

This imperfect action not only resulted in a long-term client, but also renewed her confidence in her business and her ability to enroll other prospects into her business.

Here are a few lessons for enrolling new clients and overcoming your desire for perfection:

Imperfect Action Is Better Than No Action: Stop waiting for the perfect time, the perfect idea or the perfect package. Use what you have and “just do it”. You can always improve on what you have later but by if you don’t put it out there in the first place you’ll never make anything happen

“Perfection” Is Not A One Time Event – It’s A Process of Trial and Error: Try something out (such as a sales conversation script), learn from every time you use it, and make an improvement every time.

Be Honest: Honesty is always the best policy. During enrolling conversations don’t fret about following the right steps or losing the prospect. Be in your element, show genuine interest in your prospect and trust your instincts. When you are honest and passionate about who you are and what you do the rest will fall into place

Celebrate All Victories: By trying to be perfect all the time, we forget the small things we accomplish. Instead of just focusing on the things she forgot to do, I asked my client to celebrate the fact that her client ASKED for her services. What a great success!

ARE YOU READY?
If you’re a perfectionist and my ode to imperfect action inspired you, I’d like to ask you to share an imperfect action you’re willing to take in the next 7 days in the comments below.

What would you do if you could:
- eliminate the distractions and interruptions that are stealing your time and energy?
- say NO to low-priority tasks you shouldn’t be doing?

Here’s the SINGLE most powerful technique I’ve discovered for getting started with reducing the time wasters in your business (which could be stealing anywhere from 50% to 80% of your time!).

DOWNLOAD The Ultimate Time Mastery Technique (PDF)

Are you ready to take the challenge, and use this for 3 days?
(If not, perhaps this could be what is keeping the time wasters in your day.)

I guarantee if you use this resource (instructions are inside) for 3 days, the way you think about time in your business will be transformed.

It’s transformed my business and that of many of my clients.

And when you are ready to transform the way you’re using your time, join us at the The Big Shift Experience. We’re going to show you how you can use all of the time you can be saving to:

=> work with clients you love
=> develop higher value products and program
=> partner with a whole new group of big-vision positive-thinking business owners
=> create a business model that works for you
=> double your income goal! (if you were on my 5 Big Shifts teleseminar, you know what I’m talking about)

Click here to learn more about The Big Shift Experience

Let me know your questions, insights – and your results (!!) in the comments below.

(Let me know if you think this “Big Income Shift” is totally on target – or way off base – in the comments below!)

This shift is going to help you get unstuck from your current income level and breaking through invisible ceilings to significantly increasing your revenue.

A big mistake many of you are making is you’re either not setting your income intention at all for 2010, or you’re not setting it high enough.

We’re going to solve this problem with the Big Income Shift.
It’s very simple, and we’re going to do it together right now.

(1) Start by writing down your income goal for 2010.
Get out a pen and write it down somewhere where you can see it. If you haven’t planned your income goal for 2010, then take a moment to choose a number that feels right to you now.

In fact, if you’re at this point in the year and you don’t already have a clear income goal formed for 2010, then committing to an intention is already a shift for you.

I have a question for you. Most business owners approach the new year with a plan to try to maintain the same income they had the year before. Or the set a goal that is slightly higher.

Here’s the problem – if you set a goal that’s the same or slightly higher than last year, you’re not going to expand your business!

If you want to have a big shift in your income, you have to set a bigger goal for 2010!

(2) OK, do you have your income goal? Now what I want you to do is double it.
So if your income goal is $50,000, then cross out $50,000 and write down $100,000.
If your goal is $100,000, make it $200,000.
If your goal is $200,000, make it $400,000.

How does it feel to expand your income goal so much? Do you feel some excitement? Do you feel some fear too? If you’re feeling some fear, that’s good, it means you’re pushing out of a comfort zone. If you’re totally comfortable with your current goal, it’s too low.

Would you be able to do this level of income? Could you save money toward a house? Could you radically reduce any debts?

Now this idea of doubling your income right now might seem like a fantasy.
But by trying on this new level of income thinking, you’ll be able to break through any limiting beliefs or old ways of thinking that held you back in 2009.

I want to give you an example of one of my clients.
We did this exercise, and at first he was a little shell-shocked by the idea of doing this big income shift. But in just one session, we were able to map out how he could change his services and his business model to give his clients a lot more value, and how he could serve a lot more people too. He also started thinking about high-level partnerships he had never thought of before. All of these possibilities for expanding his business opened up in one conversation. And it all happened by making this one shift in his mind.

So the Big Income shift is the first step is to significantly increase your income goal in 2010. Because when you do, you’ll start to attract the people, the ideas, and the resources to make it happen. Can you imagine if all of us on this call made a huge shift to our income goal right now, and we worked together to help each other achieve it? We would all be able to chart a course for doing business in a bigger way, and be bold about helping a lot more people.

When you begin to make this big income shift, your confidence grows, your income begins to grow and accelerate. And yes, it feels great.

Now if you want to turn your Big Income Shift into reality, join us for The Big Shift Experience LIVE event in San Francisco!