If you do personal work for your clients – whether it’s coaching, massage, copywriting, or anything else where you’re performing a task, a project, or a service  for someone else – you’re trading your hours for their dollars. And  of course you know that there’s a limit on how many hours you have available for trading. We [...]

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You know more than you think you do – about your business, about marketing, about your clients, and about what to do next to be successful. That’s true whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been in business for years. I’ll prove it to you.  You’ve had at least one, probably several, and maybe all [...]

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It’s a traditional sales-meeting rant:  “Let’s make it happen!”  It’s a charity fundraising chant:  “We’re gonna make it happen!” It’s something my clients say to me:  “I have to make this happen!” But you cannot “make” anything happen. There may be a few small things in your immediate vicinity that you have that much control [...]

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Business plans.  Marketing plans.  Project plans. Everyone says you’re supposed to make plans.   It’s such commonly accepted wisdom that no one ever stops to ask why. Of course there are times when you need a plan.  When you’re preparing to launch a new product or service, conduct a workshop, or roll out a new website [...]

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This may surprise you, coming from someone who’s constantly haranguing everyone to discover and declare their uniqueness – but there is actually a time when uniqueness is a mistake, and being part of the crowd is your best bet.  A time when being unique doesn’t make you more visible – it actually makes you invisible. It’s a very [...]

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Marketing is very simple. It’s just a conversation.  A conversation about how you can help someone. As business owners, we make it so complicated. We tie it up in our anxiety about money, about being liked, about being good enough, about being successful.  It’s no wonder that it becomes this Huge Big Thing we feel [...]

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I grew up understanding that mistakes were very bad and to be avoided at any cost.  (Literally, at any cost.  Which is a very high price to pay.) No surprise, then, that I grew up to be a detail-oriented, people-pleasing perfectionist with a deep aversion – okay, a deep fear – of vulnerability.  I’m not [...]

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Claim your autonomy. Don’t give other people – no matter how expert they may be – the power to control what you do in your business. I know that’s scary.  For the first few years (maybe more) that I was in business, I chased the experts.  I downloaded endless free reports, e-books, training materials.  I [...]

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There are a thousand books out there telling you that your marketing isn’t about you, it’s about your customer. There are a billion blog posts that say variations of the same thing.  You might be familiar with it as, “Write your marketing copy as if you’re writing to one single person,” or you may just [...]

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Blogging about your struggles with marketing – tweeting about not having enough clients – describing the loneliness of being self-employed … all that bleeding and struggling and suffering in public is really, really bad for your business. Being in business can feel difficult and lonely.  Been there, done that, and I’ll undoubtedly be there and do it again, over and over.  We all [...]

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