Do you feel you are missing something because you’re not real clear about your niche? You know how important it is, but just aren’t sure how to find it!

Your niche isn’t just who you work with, but it’s what you do for the people you most love working with. It’s the combination of who you serve, the problem you help them solve, and your own system of how you help them. This blog will only address the client, not how to create your own branded system.

Actually, identifying your niche is quite easy. Here are the steps you should take to clarify what your niche is:

Step 1: Clarify what you’re all about.
Determine what business you’re really in. What makes you tick? Why are you in business when you consider the BIG picture? No matter who you would work with, what is the over-reaching thing you do?

Step 2: Who do you like to work with?
Identify the population of people you would most love to work with. When I work with people in my Niche Breakthrough process, they come up with several populations and are able to work through the brainstorming process to determine who they like and understand, and who they don’t really like or understand. It’s important to be excited and passionate about who you work with.

Step 3: Get to know your clients.
Identify what problems they struggle with, what solutions they’d like to see instead, what it is they need to know, what they ultimately want, and why that’s important to them. If you can speak their language and speak to their problems, they will listen. This is the key to successful marketing.

Step 4: Test them.
It’s one thing to pick a population that you would love to work with, but will they buy what you have to offer? Is this audience one who will invest with you, and do you love them? If so, great! If not, reconsider. You also want to research to see if this population buys similar things to what you have to offer.

Clarifying your niche will help cut down the amount of time you need to spend on marketing, and will allow you to reach your target market easier than when you’re trying to please everyone. One thing I often tell my clients is if you don’t really ‘see’ your ideal client, and speak to him/her, then you’re speaking to “Generic Everyone” and no one will hear your message!

Let me know how you do with identifying your niche.

Margie
MEG Enterprises, Inc.

Do you still struggle with your niche? Sign up now for the Teleseminar series.

Do you ever wonder how people achieve their dreams, against all logical odds? However do they do that? It’s really several things: they can visualize it, they believe they can make it happen (with a few question marks), they set big goals, and they ask for help.

I watched the movie “The Secret” again tonight, and even though I am pretty much eternally positive, it still helped remind me that we really can create a state of reality that helps propel us into success. I continue to do it, myself, but we always need reminders, in order to push to take that next step.

How do we make that happen that will keep us from dropping away from that state of success?

1. Dream
   Yes, you DO have to dream. But you don’t always have to keep the dreams safe and ‘realistic’; allow yourself to dream REALLY BIG! Usually we won’t dream big because we’re not sure how we’ll make them happen. But think about this: How DO people make big dreams happen? They FIRST dream. Then they go about living as if it IS going to happen.

   How do you do it? Put your dream down on paper as if it’s happened.

2. Set milestones
   When you have milestones, you then have a way to check how on track you are for achieving your goals. It gives you short-term goals to strive for, and helps keep the dream real.

   How do you do it? Write out specific milestones. What would you like to achieve in a year from now? Six months? 30-60 days?

3. Plan
   My strength for my clients is to help them focus and then help them plan, so they can achieve the goals they set when they focus. Creating the plans turn the big dreams into reality.

   How do you do it? Look at your milestones, starting with the shortest-term one, and ask yourself what you have to do to make it happen.

4. Share what you want
   Tell the world what you want. Ask for it. Ask for help. Business success is just like weight loss success; when you share what you are striving for with others, you can’t hide. And when you can’t hide, you don’t give up. Telling the world what you want, even when you don’t know how you’re going to get it, helps achieve your success.

   How do you do it? Pick several close people to share with, and then determine who you will bring into your sphere to help you get what you want.

Let me know how things go and here’s to your success!

Margie
MEG Enterprises, Inc

Do you want to simplify the journey to making your business dreams come true? Imagine having a business coach and consultant at your fingertips, and schedule your 30-minute Diamond Discovery Session with me today to start making that dream come true!

You want to start a business. You have dreamed of this for years, ever since graduating or starting school. So what’s been holding you back?

Do this: Close your eyes and imagine you are at the edge of a huge cliff. You are looking over the Grand Canyon. There is a huge expanse of air in front of you and below you. And I am asking you to jump, spread your wings, and know that you can fly! Can you? Only YOU can answer that question. You really can do anything you want to do. It just takes will and planning.

Many times I hear from people who tell me they will contact me for help in starting up their business ‘when I’m ready’. There have also been times when these same people finally call out of desperation: Their need to ‘just do it’ has become stronger than waiting for that ‘perfect time’. And they are able to create their dream business, afterall.

Does this sound like you? Are you waiting until things are just perfect before you seriously start working on creating the business of your dreams? You have every certification you can think you might ever need. You attend every educational seminar on every topic you think people might ask you about. You’re sure there is something you are missing, however.

But what is really holding you back? Is it fear of failure? Many people are petrified that they will step up, or jump from that cliff, and fall flat on their face. They will look like a fool and feel like a failure, but imagine the regret they live with as they look back on their life and didn’t even give it a try. You will never look back and wish you had NOT taken action to live your dream. Many people do think about the things they did NOT do, however.

Yes, it is true that over 50% of the 600,000 new businesses that start each year fail in the first year. What is more important to know, however, is that many of those failed businesses didn’t even start with a serious plan before they opened their doors! No wonder they failed! Have you heard the phrase, ‘failing to plan is a plan for failure’? This means that if you don’t know where you’re going, you are unlikely to get there. Would you plan a cross-country trip without mapping out your plan? Then why would anyone consider starting a business without setting up goals, objectives and action steps to make it happen?

Fear of failure is the most often sited reason for hesitation to starting up a business. But, what people seldom talk about, which is a much more real concern is the fear of success! What if your business grows and becomes more than you ever imagined? What does THAT mean? Many people find that more frightening than failing. If they fail, they can at least go back to what was safe and easy. If they succeed, they will experience even more challenges as their business grows and becomes more than just ‘them’.

Margie
MEG Enterprises

Do YOU struggle with the planning to make your success happen? If so, let me help you set your entire 2012 plan up, which includes what you have to offer and how you will promote it. We can do this in the “Marketing Plan in a Day” VIP intensive coaching session. To learn more, click here.

You have been accepted to speak at a professional conference and the organization wants your materials and slides in 2 months. You have added this task into your marketing calendar and today you will start working on it. And – business is booming! In fact, you just heard from a potential client who has decided that she would like to start working with you next month. This means she needs your welcome packet and invoice. And you received a notice while checking email that one person bought your book and another person purchased some materials from your website. You realize that you need to take care of these things immediately, so instead of working on your materials, you take care of these items.

Stopping to handle product fulfillment, client management and accounting are HUGE time zaps! Not only can they disrupt working on projects that will bring in money for the company, but are actually costing you money! How is this so, you ask? If you consider what you charge, you have to realize that that is what you are spending for your OWN work. So, if you charge $100/hour and spend 3 hours on the tasks above, you have just cost the company $300.

Hire it out
When growing a new business, it is scary to consider hiring people, but when you consider the savings AND that this then frees you up to make MORE money, it’s almost a no-brainer (I didn’t say it’s not scary, though!).

If you find an assistant who can not only answer the phone, but also do your entire client billing and scheduling, what is that worth to you? Many assistants might charge between $20-45/hour, so you again are saving money if you had to pay your assistant for 3 hours for them to take care of these tasks, while you write your speech and work on other programs, services and products for your clients. And today that assistant can either be right there in your town, or across the country!

There also comes a time when you will be ready for a bookkeeper to handle all of the accounting for your company. If your business is NOT accounting/bookkeeping, this is another task that can be hired out. Imagine not having to ever go into your accounting software, again! The same thing is so with an accountant, which, if you are already in business, you should have, anyway. Take advantage of the expertise that these people have to help you grow your business.

Using technology
The final important aspect of managing your time is taking advantage of the technology that is available, today. Examples include:

• Autoresponders
• Shopping carts

Assuming you already have a website, just as essential is an autoresponder. The LAST thing you want to spend your time on is manually sending out emails when someone buys from you or signs up for your newsletter! And this is not what you want to be paying your assistant to do, either. An autoresponder is a program that automatically sets up to send particular people emails. When you sign up for a newsletter, or you purchase something online, if you receive an email, that usually has been generated by an autoresponder. Most assistants today can set up autoresponders.

Although it’s free and easy to set up a PayPal account and generate ‘buy now’ buttons for your website, once you offer more than one item on your site, it’s time for a shopping cart. A shopping cart works much like a shopping cart in a grocery store: If you want to buy more than one item, you put it in the shopping cart, and when you’re ready to buy, you ‘check out’, thus pay for all the items at once.

What is important to know about shopping carts is they must coordinate with your merchant account. Again, this is where a knowledgeable assistant can be INVALUABLE. Not only can they perform tasks that would take you hours or days to learn, but while they’re setting up such systems for your company, you are again making more money by seeing clients or working on new products and services.

Margie
MEG Enterprises, Inc.

Do you struggle with getting things done? Do you have a vision for your business, but are unclear how to make it happen? Come join us for the Prosperity Secrets Platinum for 2012 and move from chaos and analysis paralysis to balance, clarity, structure and prosperity.

I am a planner. And many of my clients are planners who also need structure. And they know what they want: a thriving, fulfilling wellness business that provides them with freedom and success.

It’s simple, really: They just need direction that will take them from chaos to clarity and prosperity. But they don’t know how to make that happen!

Here are the 5 simple steps to get started:

Step #1 – Discover your true passion. If you don’t love what you do, you will NOT see the success you envision.

Step #2 – Clarify who you most love to work with. If you don’t love them, you’re not going to be able to really identify their problems and what they most want.

Step #3 – Develop your own branded system to offer. Once you have done this, the opportunities are ENDLESS!

Step #4 – Create your calendar for success. This is where the planning begins. You have to have a plan to achieve your success. But this is also the critical area where you also plan your PERSONAL time, too, so it’s TRUE success, not just financial success.

Step #5 – Write out your systems. For every service, program and product you create, make sure you write out every step you take to move forward with it. This is one of the best steps you can take to position yourself for when you are ready for the NEXT step in your business.

Step back and enjoy!

Margie
MEG Enterprises, Inc.

Would you like to create all the above? Then you need to join us in 2012 in the Prosperity Secrets Platinum program!