Growing A Business - Come From A Place Of Service To Others

One of the challenges of growing a business, especially a new business, is the lack of money, customers and time. You need money to pay your employees and bills. You need the customers to provide the money. You need time to go out and get the customers. It becomes a "lose lose" situation that contributes to most small businesses going out of business even before people have the opportunity to experience your quality products and services that you have to offer.

It's important that you shift your focus from focusing on the here and now and planting seeds that will impact your business in the future. This is one of the hardest things for small businesses to do because the reality is BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID NOW!

I totally understand and that is why I can right these words with confidence that you will experience better results if you take this advice. I have not just made this up; I have been studying people who have gone before me and figured out a system that has lasting results. Successful large companies have been doing this for years and successful small companies are successful because they implement these principals.

1. Before you can "get" you have to give.
This does not mean you have to give everyone money, time or products that you do not have. It means that you give what and who you are which is your knowledge. Start a blog, newsletter or forum that gives useful information that will help people. The more useful the content, the more credible you will be in the eyes of the reader and they will be more likely to hire you over your competition because chances are your competition is not doing this. If they are doing this, you will give potential clients a reason to consider you as well as your competition.

Example: If you are a chef, start a newsletter with useful cooking tips that a person can easily do own their own. They will keep coming back to your newsletter because you were extremely helpful to them and you obviously know what you are talking about. In addition, you are keeping yourself in front of your potential clients which is " soft advertising." (I think I may have just made that term up.) The bottom line, you are going over and beyond your call of duty which will help you to stand out, provide free advertising, give useful advice that will add value to a person's life and above all, you are setting in motion the law of reaping what you are sowing which will be greatly rewarded.

Warning: Do not think that this will be an instant answer to your money problems. Nothing in life happens immediately. What you are doing is planting seeds that will eventually break ground and flourish. The more giving you are, the more seeds you are planting. Successful businesses do this all of the time and that is why they continue to grow.

Tip: Mentally do this because you want to be of service. At first you may be doing it for self-serving reasons. That is okay. Start doing it anyways. You will find that the giving will become so addictive that the joy you get out of knowing you helped someone will be so worth it. You can research this on your own but I will give you the gist of the study; studies show that people who are cheerful givers are healthier, live longer and are much happier than people who are not. Giving useful information is an easy way to give of yourself and although it may take a little bit of time, if you don't have the customers right now, you have the time.

2. Offer free 1 hour classes at the library or through your chamber of commerce once a month.
Many people are looking to be educated on your knowledge. By offering free classes, you have removed the pressure from yourself that you have to be perfect and you have made people aware that you exist. In addition you can brush up on your public speaking skills and start positioning yourself as an expert in your field.

In addition, you will find that you will meet a lot of interesting people who may end up being your friend or a business referral. This is especially effective if you have depleted your networking and advertising budget.

3. Offer free teleseminars and webinars.
Did you know that you can host a teleseminar for free. There are free services out there that allows you to have 100 callers and they will even record the call for you so that you can offer it on your website as a free download. http://freeteleconferencing.com/ is one of them. You can use this call as a free gift that requires you to get a name and email address that can be a lead which can possibly turn into a referral of future sell. Make sure your teleseminar is under an hour and is packed with useful content. People are smart so they will know if you are just feeling up the time with useless babble and will hang up. Make and outline with 3-5 of your most common questions and give answers that will make sense to them. Make sure you include in the call your information and a website where they can go and purchase your product and/or service. It helps if you give a special price for ordering within the next week and hold yourself to it. Follow up with all of the callers every other day in a non-pushy informative way.

You can post your event for free at www.eventful.com and Event Brite

I hope these tips have helped you. Remember that the people who are successful have success because they are doing the things that no one else wants to do. Instead of being frustrated, channel that energy into serving others and you will find that your reward will be much greater than the money that will eventually come as a result of your generosity.

Give thanks to God for this gentle lesson and have a wonderful and blessed day.

For more tips and resources, go to http://happykindalista.com.

Have a super-fantastic day everyone,

Alisani Brazil, The Happy Kindalista