Get present to how you’re thinking, being, and doing to authentically grow your business.
This article outlines the interdependent system of thinking, being, and doing that occurs in the life cycle of becoming a successful entrepreneur. You will examine the internal and external barriers that get in the way of playing full out. You will learn what it means to have the MINDSET, LANGUAGE, and MAP to attract the clients you most want to work with so you can make money doing what you love.
Conscious Marketing™ is about awakening your sense of how you show up and allowing your action to flow from that place. In stages, it’s about having a clear understanding of your thinking, being, and doing. By taking a step back and getting present you can find a new way of thinking that clears the way for all the marketing opportunities to arrive. From this place, marketing can be different, and even fun! In this system, you follow a simple roadmap that gets you from purpose and vision to creating personal action steps for success with confidence and accountability.
Getting conscious about marketing means going within and taking an honest inventory of how you’re thinking and feeling about marketing as well as taking stock of your marketing messages, tools, and plans. Getting conscious offers the opportunity to rid yourself of the anxiety that’s typically attached to building a practice. Once you clear the emotional decks, you can step into the place of presence, where the clarity needed to CHOOSE a new way of thinking about marketing exists.
Creating that new mindset about how you want to show up and communicate the gifts you put forth in the world allows you to capture the attention of the people you most want to attract and engage. Getting conscious creates the opening within – the place where you begin to build your thinking and actions to grow your practice. Marketing is revealing who you are, and what you offer, authentically and naturally, so as to attract and engage the people you most want to work with. It’s falling in love again with your contribution and enrolling others in that.
Being a conscious marketer means getting to the heart of what it takes to build a client base with less fear, struggle, and effort. It means experiencing the necessary breakthroughs that release us from our marketing gremlins. In Taming Your Gremlins, Rick Carson refers to them as the great inner critics in our mind. You may know them as therelentless messages in your head that say things like “You? Sell? Hah! What if you fail?” To get conscious means that you have shifted your thinking such that a new mindset can emerge. This new mindset dramatically changes your course. Getting CONSCIOUS dramatically shifts your results.
We begin by forgetting about marketing! The first order of business is to identify the self-limiting beliefs and fears that hold us back from marketing full-out. When we know something’s stopping us and we’re not sure why, it’s time to examine our underlying beliefs. If we don’t, we stay in the same ‘stuck’ place and we won’t grow our business. So, first up, is getting crystal clear about HOW we think about marketing that doesn’t serve us.
Each of us has fears, whether it’s fear of failing, being rejected, disliked for being successful, worrying about what others will think or say, etc. The problem is these fears hold us back from doing what it takes to get clients. The fear of being rejected alone can stop us cold from marketing!
When we go within and listen to our inner dialogue, we start to notice limiting beliefs about money, marketing, and entrepreneurship—the ones that stifle our efforts and preclude results. By listening carefully to the voices in our head, we begin to see this THINKING for what it really is – simple FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. We have to be willing to put aside the fear, doubt, and worry to create the clearing for a new, conscious way of thinking about marketing that paves the way for success.
Until we take the time to stop and identify these beliefs, we can’t do anything about them.
So the first step is staring them down; getting conscious to the subconscious, hard-wired thinking that is creating our results! Our subconscious thinking creates our reality. Knowing how we think about marketing and how to shift our belief system around it is a skill most haven’t learned. Our thoughts and beliefs affect us profoundly, but we often don’t see it, as more than 90% of our thinking is subconscious. This subconscious thinking shapes our actions and hence, results. Therefore, if you think marketing is difficult, it leads to procrastination about marketing or avoidance altogether! Little action equals poor results.
Once we’re clear as to the thoughts and beliefs that mitigate our results, we can unhook from the thinking that binds us to playing small and safe. We need to powerfully disengage from the fears, perceptions, attitudes, expectations, and assumptions which frees us to create a new paradigm for how marketing could look—one that resonates for us. One we feel excited to try. One that energizes us into action.
Here are some of the thoughts and assumptions prevalent among service professionals I work with. Any ring a bell?
• I hate how marketing feels. It often leads to rejection.
• If I ask for referrals it will sound like I’m begging.
• No one has money to pay for my services in this economy.
• Marketing is annoying to people. People will avoid me.
• I don’t have enough time to market.
• I can’t start until I know exactly what to do.
• I’m not (trained, credentialed, educated, experienced, etc.) enough yet.
Sound familiar? Perhaps now is the time to create new attitudes about marketing that no longer limit our potential.
Okay, so we’ve identified what’s holding us back. What do we do next? Powerfully putting fear aside sets the stage for reconnecting to our VISION as a successful entrepreneur. We draw out who we are, what our gifts are, whom we want to help, and how we bring our solutions to bear. A strong and clear vision for ourselves and our practice comes into view.
Once we are fully in tune with the vision we want to create for ourselves, we are able to start SPEAKING directly and impactfully to the needs of the people we feel compelled to serve. If we’re not clear and powerful in our messaging, we confuse people or, worse, fail to get their attention.
BEING true to ourself and claiming our voice is the most important aspect. We want to communicate in a genuine way in order to attract attention from those we want to help. We unearth our authentic voice so that we can speak about what we do in a way that’s fully aligned with who we are. Communicating from our core allows us to speak more openly, from the heart, and gives us the freedom to fully step into action. This means falling in love again with what we’re offering and allowing that energy to be infused into all our communication.
We craft MESSAGES about our target markets, their challenges, and our solutions. We begin to understand basic marketing syntax which helps us communicate succinctly, impactfully, and authentically. Understanding marketing syntax, a new use of language, lends itself to communicating with ease, clarity, and confidence. We also discover the role of story-telling to allow for natural conversations that are as
comfortable as talking about the weather. It is important to practice articulating our
messages so that we feel confident speaking to people whose potential we believe in and know we can make a difference.
Taking action, the DOING piece, is more than handing out business cards, creating flyers, and giving classes. It starts with finding the conscious entrepreneur within and bringing it forward in all we say and do. Once we are truly congruent and aligned with our core, we can show up in a way that the DOING flows easily.
We’ll start DOING more than before, with commitment and focus, creating opportunities, and getting better results. We will generate more paying clients which means we get to make money doing what we love. We get to play full out, as an entrepreneur, enjoying the freedom we dreamed about and the financial stability we deserve.
Another step of the DOING is the creation of a marketing PLAN that propels us forward. A step-by-step map of what we will do and how we will do it. We also identify a few simple, but solid, tools we will need to carry the plan into inspired actions. We create offers that allow us to invite people to experience what it would feel like to get the results we promise.
We create authentic invitations that really allow others to see what we contribute. The plan is a simple, yet effective, marketing system so that we continuously create a sustainable supply of leads. The plan is the map we use to guide our movement forward. By following it, a sustainable practice emerges; one that reflects us authentically and creates abundance.
The last phase is sticking to our action plan for ongoing success. This means securing strong ACCOUNTABILITY. One key way of holding ourselves accountable is by becoming a member of a mastermind group led by a marketing mentor filled with equally committed, talented, and motivated professionals to stay fresh, inspired, and support each other’s pursuit of success.
A mentor helps us develop and refine our marketing plan; share innovative strategies and insider marketing tips; help us avoid costly mistakes; provides accountability for reporting progress made in our plan. We are locked into accountability for those times when we want to quit. And, let’s face it, we all want to quit sometimes! With that level of accountability, we take smarter and more action which gets to where we’re going faster and easier.
It’s amazing to see how much faster you grow when led by a marketing mentor and being supported and held accountable by a powerful group of like-minded people who believe in your potential. You can do anything with that level of energy and support.
Most entrepreneurs implement marketing activities randomly and get random results. By understanding and working this interdependent system of marketing, you’ll finally create consistent and sustainable results. Your confidence will soar! You’ll start attracting more clients and (dare I say) get excited about working your new system.
Bottom line – our presence and how we show up all starts with our thinking, followed by our being, and doing. If you become conscious about who you are, what you do, what you give others, then your marketing comes from the inside out. Marketing is revealing who you are, and what you offer, naturally and authentically, such that you attract and engage your perfect clients. It’s falling in love, again, with your contribution and enrolling others in that.
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While this article focuses on coaches, this marketing system is applicable to all service professionals: consultants, trainers, healers, therapists, speakers, real estate brokers etc… Copyright 2009 Paulette Rao. All rights in all media reserved
How the Conscious Marketing™ System Works
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