Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid Wisdom
- Long after people forget what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel. – Carl W. Buechner
- When you’re fully self-expressed, fully demonstrating your values and your views, you’ll naturally attract and draw to yourself those you’re best suited to work with, and you’ll push away those you’re not meant to work with.
- Marketing and sales isn’t about trying to convince, coerce, or manipulate people into buying your services. It’s about putting yourself out in front of, and offering your services to, those whom you are meant to serve — people who already need and are looking for your services.
- You must offer what your potential clients want to buy, not what you want to sell or think they should want to buy. You must be able to look at your services from your client’s perspective—their urgent needs and compelling desires.
- The greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression.
- If you don’t want to make a difference, consider making y our living as something other than a service professional. The operative word is service.
- We hear the question, “What do you do for a living?” all the time. Your professional category alone is the wrong answer.
- When you’re passionate and excited about what you do and you let it show, it’s incredibly attractive. Real passion can’t be faked and there’s nothing more appealing and convincing than knowing someone is speaking from the heart.
- Begin to think of and refer to yourself as a category authority—an expert in your field.
- You are in the business of serving other people as you stand in the service of your destiny and express yourself through your work.
- If you’ve been feeling like you can’t, or shouldn’t, be paid to do what you love, you must let that limiting belief go if you’re to be booked solid.
- A connection with another human being means that you’re in sync with, and relevant to each other. Let that be our definition of networking.
- If you feel called to share a message, it’s because there are people in the world who are waiting to hear it.
- There are certain people you’re meant to serve and others you’re not. If you can help other professionals attract business through you, you’re creating more abundance for everyone involved.
The Simple Way to Network and Get Referrals
As a business owner, you’ll need to proactively reach out to potential clients to make offers and to marketing partners and other decision makers to create business opportunities.
The most important direct outreach you do might well be to other service professionals, businesses, and professional associations to network, cross-promote, and build referral relationships.
But so many of us struggle with this. The idea of reaching out to someone that we don’t know…Yikes! You might be getting queasy just thinking about it. How do you do it (without nausea)?
With the BYS List of 20, of course. Don’t have one? Really? Ok, let’s make one…
The Book Yourself Solid List of 20
Make a List of 20 people within your industry with whom you’d like to develop professional relationships.
These are people whom you do not yet know — influencers within your target market who can help you get booked solid. This is your BYS List of 20.
The list never leaves your side. It sits on your desk. Lives on your computer. And, travels with you when you’re on the road.
Why twenty and why must you keep it with you at all times?
- Since your success is, in large part, determined by the people within your industry who are willing to refer to you or to put you in front of your ideal clients or endorse you, you need to keep these people top of mind. Keeping this list by your side will ensure that you’re thinking of them and, if you do, you’ll begin to notice opportunities to connect with them and get to know them.
- And, twenty, because it’s a large enough number to keep your focus expansive but narrow enough that you won’t be overwhelmed.
Written Exercise: Identify a minimum of three, and a maximum of twenty, people you’d like to reach out to directly and personally. (These may be prospective clients, decision makers at an organization or association, or the press.) At this moment, you might not think you can fill out your List of 20, but now that you know what you need to do, you’ll start to take notice of the people you should add to this list.
Here’s what you do with your list:
- Each day, reach out to the person at the top of the list.
- After you’ve reached out to this person, place this person at the bottom of the list.
- Now that this person has been moved to the end of the list, the person who was number 2 on the list becomes number 1 and each other person moves up one spot. This way your List of 20 always stays at twenty.
You’ll reach out to each person approximately every twenty business days which is about once per month.
This direct outreach activity occurs every day. This is critical. Dedicated, disciplined and determined action is key to your direct outreach success.
Remember, the BYS List of 20 is your wish list. You’re list of 20 people that could have a significant impact on your business through their referrals, introductions and advice. Do this daily and you’ll be booked solid in no time flat.
Booked Solid Action Step: Reach out to the first person on your list of 20 by sending a card or email of appreciation. Or maybe congratulate them on an accomplishment. Simple.
Using the Book Yourself Solid Direct Outreach Strategy is all about making personal connections. Reach out to others from the heart, in a way that is genuine and authentic for you.
Take it one step at a time and you’ll do fine.
Why People Buy – Anything and Everything
People want to express their values. Plain and simple. And they do so through the products and services they buy. If you saw a fat casino tab, Smirnoff delivery charges and a Hummer lease payment on my Amex statement, you’d know what I value. However, if my charges included yoga sessions, continuing education in MIT’s Birthing of Giants program and the compost for a backyard vegetable garden, you’d get a different sense of values.
Full-Day BYS Seminar Open to Public
Looking forward to teaching full-day OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Book Yourself Solid workshop Wednesday, May 19, 2010 in Ivyland, PA. It’s something like $129. Can’t beat that!
Forget Self-Help. Will Rogers had the answers to life’s toughest questions…
Simple but Brilliant and full of truths from Will Rogers. Enjoy!
Will Rogers, who died in a 1935 plane crash with his best friend, Wylie Post, was probably the greatest philosophical sage this country ever has known. Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.
- Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
- There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.
- Never miss a good chance to shut up. Always drink upstream from the herd.
- If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
- The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.
- There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
- Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
- If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.
- Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin’ it back.
- After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring.
- He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
ABOUT GROWING OLDER…
- First ~ Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
- Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
- Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know ‘why’ I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved.
- Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
- Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.
- Sixth ~ I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
- Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.
- Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
- Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.
- Tenth ~ Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it’s called golf.
And, finally ~ If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old.
