Or, as one fair soul asked me during our consultation in December, “How do you tell someone you’re wonderful?”

Before we can talk about how you describe what you do, let’s take a look at what you may be doing wrong now that’s stopping any chance of working with that prospective client.

1. You may be doing work you don’t believe in.

If you’re not well placed in your work or if you’ve chosen the wrong niche – if you feel you should be a dog trainer instead of the copywriter you are, or if you should be working with authors instead of executives – it’s going to show in your work. And it’s going to show in the way you talk about how you serve your clients. You’ve got to be passionate about what you do in order to interest people in working with you. If you can’t be passionate about your work, find a way to be passionate about the way you deliver it.

2. You may be offering what you think your clients need instead of what they actually want.

This is an easy one to get caught up in, especially if you’re really good at what you do – because you probably do know what your client needs. But the first rule of marketing success is to find a starving market, not to provide something and then talk people into buying it.

3. You may be talking from your point of view instead of your client’s.

Things often look very different from the client’s point of view — have you put yourself in his shoes? Have you put your offer in language that shows you understand what he’s up against? I love the C.S. Lewis quote, “What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you’re standing.” Where are you standing?

4. You may be doing what everyone else is doing, or saying what everyone else is saying.

Do you blend in with the crowd? Does your message sound exactly like your competitors’ messages? Do you “exceed customer expectations” or help your clients “get to the next level,” “live the life of their dreams,” or blah blah blah blah blah. . .

5. You may be telling them what you are instead of what you can do for them.

Do you tell people you’re a coach or a web designer and leave it at that? Very few clients are looking for people with titles. Most clients are looking for solutions to their problems, results, or things that will make them feel great.

So how do you let your ideal client know what you do, in a way that’s not pushy or salesy or awkward, and also gets across the fact that you’re unique and wonderful and absolutely what they want and need? Get rid of these 5 mistakes and you’re well on your way.

If you want to know more, check out my 4-week small group interactive program, beginning March 2nd! You can also listen to the recording of my teleclass, “The End of the Elevator Speech: How to Have Great Conversations that Will Show How Interesting You Are & Get You Picked Over the Other Guy.” (The class is over, but sign up so you can get the recording.)

Here’s the deal:

• Even though it’s well past, it would still be cool if you’d Tweet about our Twitterview, or RT our Tweets (at least once) using the #HOWConf hashtag (Find a Tweet to RT by searching for HOWConf)
• Not on Twitter? Really? Then stand up, turn around 3 times, pat yourself on the head, and say (out loud), “I will get a Twitter account so I can follow the rest of the Twitterviews Bryn has planned.” You can sit down now.
• Answer the questions below to apply (I need to know that you’re a legitimate business owner and a good candidate for the consultation)

That’s it!

Here’s how you’ll know if the consultation is for you:

You feel so stuck in the “busy-ness” of your business that you can’t get to the big ideas, the stuff you really need and want to do to grow your business.

You just feel stuck, or like you’re going around in circles.

You don’t know how to go about building your team, or the team you’ve built isn’t working out that well for you. Or you’re just confused about getting support altogether, because you’ve been doing everything by yourself so long.

So here’s what we’ll work together to do:

• create a clear vision for your business success and the lifestyle you’d like your business to provide, and
• uncover hidden challenges and/or belief systems that may be sabotaging the growth of your business and keeping you working too many hours

You’ll leave this session renewed, re-energized, and inspired. Not bad for 30 minutes.

All you need to do is answer these questions to apply:

1. What kind of product/service do you provide?
2. How long have you had your business?
3. What are your revenue goals for the next 12 months?
4. What was your business revenue over the last 12 months? (ballpark)
5. What do you see as the major challenges holding you and your business back from growing at the pace you want?
6. On a scale of 0-10, how important is it for you to overcome your challenges and achieve your goals?
   
7. How many people are in your company?
8. Full Name
9. Email Address
10. Website Address
11. Phone Number
12. Time Zone

And anything else you think I need to know.
(All of your information will be kept strictly confidential, of course.)

Send your answers to me in an email (marcia at hoeck dot net) and I’ll get back to you. Remember, there are only a limited number of consultations available, so get your application in soon.

Let’s get started!

Marcia

P.S. Catch the full text of my Twitter interview with HOW’s Bryn Mooth.

Maybe you’re aware of that. But what does it really mean, anyway?

A positioning statement stands for one message that’s unique to you, tells your customers the value you bring, and will give you a competitive edge. It gives people a reason to buy from you. It tells them where you stand. Positioning yourself in the minds of your prospective clients is one of the most valuable things you can do.

If you don’t position your company, someone else, most likely your competitors, will do it for you — and it won’t be good. They’ll say you’re the cheap one, or the too-expensive one, or the one that only does “this,” when really what you do is “that.” It can be very frustrating.

Positioning involves drilling down to the one most important factor that makes you different, that will make you stand out from the pack. Positioning is difficult because it’s counterintuitive — most people instinctively do what others in their fields are doing to succeed. Like, you’re a web designer, so you look at what other web designers are doing and you do that. You figure you need to look like a web designer, right? Well. . . yes, to a point.

But that won’t position you to stand out. You get lost in the sea of web designers.

Your place among the competition

So that’s where we need to start. Defining your position in the market couldn’t be complete or realistic without looking at who you’re competing against. You need to both fit in — so your potential clients will recognize you — and stand out. If you do a few simple things to analyze your competition’s positioning, you’ll be way ahead of most of them.

First, make a list of your direct competitors — the ones your Ideal Customer (you know who your Ideal Customer is, right?) most considers to be your competition — and look for everything you can find out about them. Go to their websites and print out the major pages. Gather any print literature or products you can find from them. Do a Google search and see what you can find written about them.

How to easily analyze your competitors’ positioning

Now review the materials. Look for common themes within each competitor company. Make note of the commonalities for each competitor. What is their tagline? What main colors do they use? Graphics? Themes? What is their main claim or “reason to buy?”

After you’ve analyzed each competitor individually, analyze the entire group in the same way — what common themes run through them? What common graphics or visuals do many of your competitors use? While some companies may have no rhyme or reason to their communications, many will be surprisingly similar.

In most industries, the results to this exercise are amazingly predictable. Companies within the same industries tend to do things the same way, in many of the ways they communicate. They share the same types of visuals, graphics, wording, colors, themes, claims, and sometimes even have very similar logos. Write out all of their taglines for comparison. Lay all of their logos side by side. Look at their colors side by side. You’ll find it isn’t going to be difficult to be different!

Now, before you go off half-cocked, thinking that all you need to do to position yourself in your market is to be different than these folks, you need to know that you’ve only scratched the surface here. This is only background information that’s going to be useful as you move forward. You still need to find the positioning that fits your company. You still need to give clients a reason to buy from you. You don’t want to be different just to be different.

But it’s a great start, isn’t it?

Who do you go to now?

As a business owner, you’re supposed to know what to do (aren’t you?) – and you have to create your own accountability. Many of us find this a very difficult thing to do by our nature as entrepreneurs – we think we’re supposed to go it alone, to be fearless and not need anyone’s help. But here’s a secret I learned years ago from a business coach: even the sharpest knife can’t carve it’s own handle. It’s okay to need help, in fact it’s smart to seek it out. No one expects you to always know what to do. (You can relax now.)

And really, let’s be honest here, you’re not superhuman just because you own a business. You are very good at some things and not so good at others – and it can be pretty darn scary standing out there all by your lonesome sometimes, can’t it?

So I’m taking it upon myself to be your coach for a few minutes, just in case you’ve lost your focus. I’m giving you permission — I take that back, I’m giving you an assignment — to stop what you’re doing and move through the following 5 strategies to regain your focus.

Here are my best suggestions for finding focus:

1. Stop and take short breaks to trick your brain when you’re overwhelmed and can’t focus. Don’t focus on focusing.

It’s your thinking mind, your conscious mind, that got you into this to begin with – this little mouse wheel — and it kind of takes over, you know, puts you in this vortex where you’re just kind of going around and around and you’re thinking the same things over and over again and you just can’t stop yourself from being overwhelmed.  So that’s why you have to really stop and go into your unconscious mind to stop it. Thinking harder won’t stop you from being overwhelmed. Thinking harder won’t help you focus.

So I’m recommending that you do things you think you shouldn’t do — take a short break, walk the dog, meditate, go out for coffee, do some stretching, anything to trick your conscious mind into going away for awhile.

Don’t focus on focusing. Just stop that conscious mind from thinking altogether. If you’re waiting for someone to give you permission, here, I give it to you: stop thinking.

2. Stay in “the now.” Put your attention on what you’re doing now, and don’t multitask.

Okay.  Being present in “the now” is something that I really feel strongly about, and this can really help your focus.  And here’s how I look at it: you can really only do one thing at a time, and multitasking is not what’s it’s cracked up to be.

There’s a principle in physics, I believe, that no two things can occupy the same space at the same time.  Now, my son says I’m stretching that a little bit, but just let me say that if you are trying to carry on a conversation and answer your email at the same time, you know that you’re really not focusing on either one.  And you could very easily delete something important or not give the person you’re talking with the attention they deserve.  If you just stop and turn away from your computer for two minutes while you really put your attention on your conversation, and then go back to your computer, it really doesn’t take a lot longer in the whole – especially if you can focus on each one — while with multitasking neither task gets your focus.

I have really found this to be one of the only ways that I can obtain real focus and clarity. You can only do what you can do, and only then can you move on to something else.  Staying in “the now” is really a powerful strategy for finding your focus

3. Check for blocks you may be putting in your own way, and make plans to bust through them. Look at what you’re resisting and why.

It may actually be you that is holding you back.

There might be some unconscious blocks that are keeping you stuck and unable to focus. Are there things in your business that keep showing up over and over again, and never get done — they just get moved around? Ask yourself if there’s something you’re resisting. What is it that’s keeping you from completing this thing?

Is there someone who could help, like a community of like-minded people or a mastermind group or a coach or a networking group or someone you could outsource it to — why isn’t it getting done? You have to ask yourself, “Do I have a block for not wanting help? Are there blocks that I’m putting in my own way? Why?” And if you really stop and look for these things, don’t just say “I can’t focus, I can’t get around this thing.”  Really stop and say, “Is it me?  Could I be standing in my own way in this particular area?”

Sometimes just resisting something can gum up the works. You’ve heard the saying, “What I resist, persists.” The idea is that if you resist something, you’re giving your attention to it, which actually magnifies it. If you just accept, recognize, and release your resistance, the situation will usually diminish. Are you resisting something?

4. Move forward by making decisions with your body truth.

When we’re kids, we naturally know how to make decisions that are best for us, but as we get older, we get that stuff drummed out of us, and we’re encouraged to use logic more often than our natural decision making processes. Those of us who lean towards doing things “the right way” and in looking good and in pleasing people can really get hung up in decision making, and when you run a business, you have to make a lot of decisions. I’ve found that business owners can lose a lot of focus here — we fear making the correct decision, so we put them off or just don’t make any. All of us are familiar with the decision making process where you put you a line down the paper and say “these are the pros and these are the cons” and then you have to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons. That’s a good process, but sometimes it’s just not enough.

Here’s a decision making process that’s like listening to your gut, only better. After you’ve done the logic thing and haven’t come to a conclusion, go someplace quiet and picture yourself in each of the situations you need to decide about.

Get quiet, close your eyes and picture yourself in each of the situations, today and maybe two years down the road, and imagine all of the detail you can.  Really breathe into it and while you’re imagining yourself in that environment, ask yourself these questions. “Does it make me feel expansive?  Do I feel bigger while I’m in this environment or does it make me contract and feel ‘less than?’”

You will get a definite body signal that is called your body truth.  Then go do the same thing for the other environment, and compare those two body truths.  It’ll be surprising to you, but it will definitely be an answer that fits you because internally, you really know the answer. But your brain sometimes can’t get to it without going through that process.

5. Take imperfect action, keep moving. Stopping to make things perfect invites indecision and overwhelm.

One of the reasons why focus may be difficult for you could be because you insist on getting everything perfect before you act.

The truth is, you’re going to evolve naturally as you go along and as your business matures.  And you aren’t going to be able to predict everything from the get go, so it’s more important to just get started, to not wait until things are perfect. Just put the website up anyway and get close. Don’t worry that your sales copy is perfectly on the mark — maybe it’s close enough. Now, I never thought I’d be saying these things, because I used to be one of those people who wouldn’t let anything go until it was perfect — and I let a lot of opportunities pass me by.

In order to keep focus in your business, you need to take action and don’t worry that it’s the perfect action. Stopping to perfect leads to inactivity which ruins focus, and it breeds doubt and indecision. Don’t get caught here! You can adjust as you go — but you can’t course correct until you’re under way.

Things change so quickly in business today, much more quickly than ever before, that you really can’t afford to not keep moving.  Your business is changing, too and the way you’re doing business is changing.  So if you’re waiting for something to be perfect, your own business is not going to be the same in six months when you’ve got what ever you’re perfecting perfect.  So — you just can’t wait.

The end result of all of this, no matter which approach we take, if we don’t ask for help or take steps to keep moving in the right direction, is that we lose focus. We no longer remember why we’re doing what we’re doing or why it’s important. It takes us twice as long to get anything done. The joy goes out of it. We’re not successful, we start losing money. All bad stuff.

So get going on your assignment. And I promise to give you an “A” if you turn in your report!

But what has been coming through the loudest is the way we limit ourselves. No matter what our business is, or how much we’re able to help our clients, most of us are hung up in some way or another by two things: 1.) the distraction of bright shiny objects and 2.) our own limiting beliefs.

“Bright Shiny Object” Syndrome
Bright Shiny Object Syndrome shows up in two ways: You may know you’ve got Bright Shiny Object Syndrome because everything that looks or sounds more interesting will invariably distract you and pull you away from what you’re doing, and you’re aware of it. You know what’s happening, but you can’t help yourself — the project you’re working on was interesting when you thought of it, but it’s not so interesting now that you actually have to put the pieces together and do it. However, that new idea over there — hey, now that has a lot of potential! And so you abandon the current project in favor of the new, shiny project with all the possibilities. And you dig into the new project with gusto until the next bright shiny object grabs your attention. And so on.

Or you may have “Hidden” Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. With this strain of the disease, the exact same thing happens, but you’re not consciously aware of it — you just beat yourself up because you can’t finish anything. You don’t exactly know why — you’re not aware of the new shiny objects taking your focus away, but the results are the same: lots of unfinished projects.

Both of these versions of the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome, whether you know you have it or you don’t, will wipe you out and leave you feeling lost, distracted, overwhelmed, stuck, stagnant, anxious, and guilty. Lots of stuff on your plate but no forward motion. No direction. And definitely limiting for your business — with a vague sense that it’s your fault.

Our Own Limiting Beliefs
It’s actually amazing that we do this to ourselves. I mean, here we are — entrepreneurs, for crying out loud. We’ve done difficult things — we’ve put it all out there by starting businesses! People think we have all the confidence in the world. But we don’t. Many of us are second-guessing ourselves all the time.

Maybe this happened because you left a big business or corporate situation, where you had a big machine behind you and, sure, it was easy to be confident with that kind of name and back-up. But now, on your own, it’s just little old you — what if they find out you don’t know everything? (Which is ridiculous, of course, who does know everything?) Believe me, no one expects that — your clients are far too busy to be worrying about what you do or don’t know, and they’re not hiring you for everything. Are you good at what you do? Can you back it up? Do you have resources to fill in the gaps for the parts you can’t personally handle? Good. That’s all you need.

Or maybe you have it in your mind that you have to measure up to some kind of ideal or pass some kind of invisible test before you can graduate to being “an expert” or be thought worthy to teach, train, or give advice. Who’s going to finally give you permission to be that expert, to move your company up a notch, to be great? It’s certainly not going to come from your competitors, and your prospects and clients are waiting to hear it from you. If you know how to do something that other people don’t, and it’s something valuable that can help them and they’re willing to pay for it, then you’re an expert already. Claim it and move on. Add some cool whiz-bang products or services and move your company up that notch. Just be sure to keep sharpening your skill — keep learning and giving your clients the benefit of your increased knowledge.

As the comic strip “Pogo” once put it, “I have seen the enemy, and he is us.” We limit ourselves.

So, do you recognize yourself here? Does any of this strike a chord with you? I’d love to hear your take on it, and what you do about it.

You decided when you started your business that it was going to fit you, and be a good match for the way you live your life. But do you really use your values to help guide you when making decisions for your business? Doing so consciously can make decisions easier, lower your stress level, attract your ideal clients to you, and help you build your expert brand.

Try it and see Begin right now to consciously act, speak, behave, relate, and communicate in ways that represent your values, and watch what happens. Be purposeful and representative in how you present yourself and your business — be aware. For example, if one of your values is that “family comes first,” bring it forward. In your conversations, when you talk to customers, partners, vendors, anyone you come into contact with — your family values should be apparent. When making presentations, when doing the actual work, represent that value. When setting up the systems of your business, plan them around setting aside time for your family. Over time, this way of thinking will become a part of the way you do business.

Decision making becomes easier Decision making becomes easier when your values are defined. As entrepreneurs, we are always looking for opportunities — and sometimes we get opportunities that we’re not too sure about. Looking at your values and really considering them will give you great insight and the knowledge and understanding to be able to say, “Yes, this is a great opportunity for my business (it matches my values),” or “I’ll pass on this. It’s not for me (it doesn’t match my values).” This may surprise those around you who say, “What!? Dude, this could be huge — what is your problem?”  Your answer: “It doesn’t line up with my core values and purpose – it’s not what we’re passionate about.” It’s not the direction you’re going. It doesn’t fit you. And you only have to look to your values to know whether it does or not.

It will help you stand out to your ideal client Your values can be very visible to your clients and customers, as it should become the way that everyone in your company acts and speaks. This can be part of your “pull” strategy, a differentiator, and the way you attract clients to you.

If one of your values is to be “friendly,” and if friendliness truly permeates everything you do, it will be noticed by clients and prospects. You can’t be friendly and not have it be noticed and become part of your company’s reputation.

You’ll also be able to judge your marketing and communications — advertising, brochures, speaking, website copy — for “friendliness.” If it doesn’t look and sound friendly, you’ll know it doesn’t fit your values. These values can become filters for all your promotions.

Aligning with your values is a great way to bond with your team Bringing your values into your business also works several ways with your team, all for the good. Your team members should share and embody the values you’ve introduced, which will be a big help in recruiting and hiring decisions — be sure to look for common values during interviews.

You should also represent your values when relating to your existing team — these are not just external values. Be friendly and authentic with your team, and let them know what your true values are. Find out what theirs are. There isn’t a better way to bond a team together than to live your values at work — people are not just looking for a place to pass time, they’re looking for a place to belong. Notice I’m not advising you to act a certain way, but to be what is the truth for you — you can’t make this stuff up. That means there will be missteps along the way of course, but if you’re on the level and you’re sincere, your team will understand, and you’ll all be the better for it.

Align your systems, too When setting up systems for your business, whether internal or external, they need to fit your values, too. If “integrity” is one of your values, then your systems should have integrity — or they should be friendly, or whatever they need to be to fit your values. You’re starting to get the picture, right?

Aligning your business with your values helps you to know what fits you and what to pass on. Sometimes knowing what to say “no” to is very, very valuable.

The bottom line with all of this is authenticity. If you live your values, and use them to help you make decisions, and represent them in your actions and your interactions with people, you’ll have a cohesive, stable base, people will know what to expect from you, and you’ll be building your brand. You’ll find yourself to be much less stressed in the long run, because you’ll have a structure to hang your business on, and it will fit you. You can tweak it and refine it as you and your business grow — and it will deepen over time. You’ll find yourself letting go of the “should’s” and doing what feels right for your heart and the soul of your business.

You’ll hear people describe you and your business in certain ways that will make you proud, because your values will shine through.

And you’ll find that true success comes from who and what you’re being, rather than what you’re doing.

Uh huh. A lot of people do.

If you’ve been working to grow your business for a while now and things aren’t happening as fast as you want, then I’d like to help you get out of that “stuck-ness” and create your own personal business breakthrough.

Here’s the deal:

I’ve heard from a lot of entrepreneurs who are having an especially difficult time getting their businesses to grow these days — because they don’t know how to get from where they are now to where they want to end up. After hearing so often from so many that they just need a plan, I decided to do something about it.

** NEW! My Super Holiday Special!**

I’d like to invite you to take advantage of a special, 30-minute “Get Unstuck and Get a Plan“ strategy session (at no cost to you) where we’ll work together to:

• create a crystal-clear vision for your business success and the perfect lifestyle you’d like your business to provide, and
• uncover hidden challenges and/or belief systems that may be sabotaging the growth of your business and keeping you working too many hours

You’ll leave this session renewed, re-energized, and inspired to turn your business into a highly profitable, revenue-generating machine that practically runs itself.

It’s crazy, I know. But I’m in a holiday mood, so jump on this now if you’re interested. Here’s how:

If you’d like to apply for this very special, very limited, and totally free 30-minute “Get Unstuck and Get a Plan“ strategy session, send me an email (marcia at hoeck dot net) and answer these questions:

1. What kind of product/service do you provide?
2. How long have you had your business?
3. What are your revenue goals for the next 12 months?
4. What was your business revenue over the last 12 months? (ballpark)
5. What do you see as the major challenges holding you and your business back from growing at the pace you want?
6. On a scale of 0-10, how important is it for you to overcome your challenges and achieve your goals today?
7. How many people are in your company?
8. Full Name
9. Email Address
10. Website Address
11. Phone Number
12. Time Zone

And anything else you think I need to know.
(All of your information will be kept strictly confidential, of course.)

Since I’m making this offer for the first time right now to so many people, and I don’t know how intense the response will be, I can’t guarantee a strategy session for everyone.

I’ll take as many people as I can and then start a waiting list. You can expect to get contacted by me or my team to schedule your session within the next 3 business days.

If you don’t hear from us, it means we’ve received more requests than we can handle right now and if something opens up we’ll get in touch with you at a later time. But we’re really gonna try to get in touch now.

Again, to apply for this offer for a free 30-minute “Get Unstuck and Get a Plan“ strategy session, just send me an email (marcia at hoeck dot net) and answer the questions listed above.

Let’s get started!

Marcia

P.S. I’ll be looking at applications on a first-come, first-served basis. The sooner you send me your answers, the more likely you are to get a session. I’m only making this offer for strategy sessions during the holidays (it’s a Holiday Special!) and I don’t know if or when I’ll be able to do this again. I’d love to talk to you — send me an email (marcia at hoeck dot net) now to get scheduled.

• “I would like a plan.”
• “I need direction on ways to work smarter.”
• “I need to build the model.”
• “I’m horrible at putting down structure.”
• “I don’t see it as a business yet.”
• “I need to put a plan together — I need to see it.”

Now, you might have thought that you were the only one, floating along all these years without a well-formed plan. Or the only one crazy enough to jump off the edge and even start a business without a plan. But you can relax now and realize that you’re in good company — and you’re not alone.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t do something about it.

I’m not going to tell you that you have to write a *Business Plan,* with a capital B and a capital P. My first accountant kept trying to get me to do that in the early days of my bricks and mortar marketing communications firm, and even though he gave me charts, graphs and pamphlets and I went out and bought a book on writing business plans, I just couldn’t do it. It was far too much structure for my creative right-brained self, and I’m not embarrassed to tell you that in the 25 years of that business, I never had a formal written business plan — other than the one I wrote with some of my staff because a prospective client required it. And even that one felt too confining and constrictive for me, so I fiddled and played with it before I abandoned it for good.

I can’t tell you how many times and in how many ways I tried to write and follow a traditional plan for my business.

That way of planning my business just didn’t work for me. As a right brain thinker who likes to analyze, I’d put things down on paper one day and go a totally different direction the next. It drove those around me absolutely crazy.

But in a way that totally worked for me, I did have a “plan” — I knew what I wanted my business to look like, and I built it around that.

• I knew what my services were and how I could best serve my clients.
• I knew who my ideal customer was, and I kept fine tuning that description.
• I knew what and who I needed to support me, and I worked hard to keep them around me.
• I knew what part of the work I wanted to do and what I wanted to delegate, what my environment would be like, how big the business would get, and how much freedom I would have.

I built my business around me, and it worked for me.

It’s so true that you can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going. But too many of us try too hard to look to the outside for a plan, thinking our business has to follow a pre-determined set of rules and a structure that’s set up by someone else. And when it doesn’t, we think there’s something wrong.

Sure, you need to be bringing in more than you’re spending. Certain structures need to be put in place. But there are many creative ways a business can work. Spend some time thinking about it, and you may find you have more of a plan than you think you do.

Second, I hear you.

I know you’re out there, and I know many of you think no one’s listening.

I admit I didn’t know you at all, until a few months ago, until I took the time to talk to you. I was just like a lot of the other clients you’ve known who were in such a hurry to build their own businesses that they didn’t give a thought to yours.

We’re really not that different, you and me. Those of us who support others can sometimes have our best messages fall on deaf ears.

I know what it’s like to be un-listened to by clients. No matter how many times you list the many many ways VAs can help, you don’t really know if they hear you. They’re so intent on their own interesting circumstances that they often don’t seem to see you marching along beside them – sometimes they don’t recognize your worth. If only they’d open their eyes and really see.

One thing I found out from talking to you, and to the clients you work with: your clients need you more now than ever. And more new and different entrepreneurs who need virtual partners are coming out of the woodwork every day. This is the time to really make your voices heard. You have to wake the sleeping giant up so he can hear you. And as a sleeping giant myself, I can give you a perspective of what might get our attention.

I will spread the word about you through my writing, speaking, and ebook, but I need your help: help me make some noise.

Here’s what you can do, right now:

1.    Communicate your worth to your clients. Sing it from the rooftops!

Write a blog post or ezine article and link it to this one. Send out an email blast and copy me. Mail letters and put me on your list. List your credentials as well as the many ways you support your clients in their businesses, and make sure they know exactly how you help them. Use case histories to remind them of past successes and suggest future ideas. Be authentic and specific.

2.    Wake your clients up to the collaborative possibilities.

Make a list of all your current clients, and the ways you could be collaborating with them, but haven’t been asked. Estimate the value of this to your client. Suggest projects your client may not have thought of – but you have, because you know their businesses. Then send an email to each of them with your individual suggestions for them and the value they could be profiting from. Or bring your ideas up the next time you talk. Do this in the right way and you never know what could happen.

3.    Let your clients know your plan for your business, your understanding of entrepreneurship, and of partnerships.

Write out your plan for your business, your growth strategies, your hopes and dreams. Detail your worth as a partner and your understanding of business, and of being an entrepreneur. Make sure your clients know this smart and savvy part of you.

4.    Show them how you can REALLY help their businesses.

What do you REALLY know about your clients’ businesses that could help them reach their goals? Do you even know your clients’ goals? What part could you play in supporting them to reach those goals? Let them know.

5.    Choose your ideal client. Let them know you’re looking for them.

Do you know who your ideal client really is? Can you describe her? Is this profile what your client roster looks like now? If not, how can you get it to be?

6.    Get testimonials.

Ask satisfied clients to write outcome-based testimonials for you and put them on your website and in your ezine. Or just send one out via email to your list occasionally. If you have trouble getting them from busy clients, do it for them — write what you think they’d say and ask them to edit it.

7.    Organize your systems and communicate their possibilities.

What systems do you use that really rock? Did you put a bit of this together with a bit of that and make magic? Do your clients know about the way you work or is this a best-kept secret? Unique systems that work can help you stand out from the pack – find out what yours are, document and talk about them.

8.    Get out from behind your computer occasionally – go places and talk yourself up.

Are you actually getting out and meeting people? Do people really know what you do and how cool you are?

9.    Gather in groups to brainstorm, mastermind, and support each other.

Are you trying to do this alone? As someone who knows the value of partnerships and support, you know the value of a like-minded group to grow with. Group coaching and mastermind groups provide inspiration, accountability, and encouragement. Get involved.

10.    Learn. Be coachable.

Never stop learning. Don’t confine your education to software programs and techniques — learn about yourself, your mindset, and your values in business. Find someone you like, trust, and click with, and be coachable, no matter how long you’ve been in business.

It’s up to each of us to sing our own songs. No one knows how good you are as well as you do. It’s a disservice not to tell, not to let your clients and future clients know exactly how you could serve them better, really, in ways that they can hear.

Become more visible to them, let them really see you, and your clients just may become better listeners. And better clients as well.