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Contemplatively, I just watched the commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. It’s very moving and profound, to say the least. In it, he talks about his brush with death, how he hopes to live another 20 or 30 years, and shares some of the most profound lessons of his life.
Like many, I’m struck by the tragedy we all feel at losing someone so innovative, so extraordinary … so young. In spite of all his amazing contributions to modern culture, I’m wondering, Did we receive all of his gifts? A heavy thought to ponder, no doubt. But one thing is certain: he lived to give them. An intense, driven creator, there’s no question that he lived his life as one committed to giving us all that he had–and he took a lot of heat for it.
My colleague, Lori Collins, pointed out what is sure to be remembered as the most profound part of his speech:
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
The chills are relentless as I contemplate the gravity of his observation, the unchanging reality that he is gone forever. I’m thinking of the times I wallow in my own selfish self-pity when contemplating a next move, or weighing the risk-reward of showing up authentically, of risking rejection, of (god-forbid) being a total failure at something I care about succeeding at deeply.
When reflecting on his life, he profoundly reveals:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever… because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”
Every week, I talk to amazing professionals who are struggling to figure out their next move, trying to make sense of their path, digging deep in hopes of hitting inspiration or courage to fuel the next leg of their journey. These people are incredibly creative, loving, giving souls who have been given really special gifts which often are considered “unconventional.” They don’t quite fit into the current molds and models of society, so giving these gifts requires courage and heart, passion and conviction, and FAITH that this journey is the right one, that everything will pay off in the end.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the ttrap of thinking you ahve somethign to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
For independent professionals (speakers, authors, executive coaches, consultants, trainers, etc), the actual design of your website could be as inexpensive as “free” if you’re a do-it-yourself-er who knows WordPress and wants to use a free template. Or, you could have a custom HTML template created with custom programming for integrating things like eCommerce and subscribe forms, styling sidebar widgets via CSS and other such techi-ness. You’ll likely pay $500-$1000 for a template website, and anywhere for $1500 to $3500 (or more, if you’re REALLY going bananas) for great design and programming (slicing a design into HTML code can be very time consuming, as can styling widgets and customizing the look-and-feel of forms).
Having your site hosted is another expense. Factors like if you’re using a shared server or dedicated one, and how much traffic you’re getting, and how many backups of your site you’re having created (and where those backups are being kept) can all influence your hosting costs. The average Joe can expect to spend $10 to $60 monthly on hosting.
The REAL upfront cost of building a great website is in creating great content. Content includes things like:
Overview of your offerings
Strong “About” page (bio, etc)
Blogs and articles
Podcasts, videos, and other multimedia
Media Room with useful media resources
Downloadables like one sheets, white papers, and other tools used to support different aspects of your marketing
Creating powerful, compelling copy is THE most important component of your website. Like, if you don’t have that, you’ve wasted whatever time and money you’ve spent getting your site up. A mediocre design and powerful copy are WAY more important than a beautiful design with weak copy. (For some strategies on creating compelling copy, check out this blog post for tips.)
But it doesn’t stop there.
Many other aspects of maintaining your online presence could potentially impact your budget, including:
Updating software & plugins, and integrating new technology into your website. On a pretty regular basis, your server and likely your software (like WordPress) is going to be issuing updates to hardware and software, respectively, that you will need to install. It’s not uncommon for these updates to break or conflict with other programs and plugins set up on your site and / or running on your server. This is not a good place for DIY-ers to be experimenting. You need a pro to help. You can often hire VAs for this kind of support if it’s simple. More complicated issues will need the support of a programmer. You really can’t get by without these ongoing expenses if you are actively marketing online and engaged in social media, so plan for it. I’d recommend putting at least an hour monthly into your budget.
Updating graphics. It seems that once or twice a year, both my and my client’s website graphics will need to be updated to accommodate some kind of change we want to implement on the site. These changes can cost as little as a couple hundred bucks, or as much as $1,000 to execute (or more). It doesn’t happen frequently, but you should expect to be reviewing things every six months and learning ways you can improve things.
Adding additional functionality to integrate with social media. It goes without saying that social media is evolving and changing at the speed of light. Sometimes we can anticipate the changes, but more often, we are a bit blindsided by the “new thing” that people want to do in the interest of sharing content. WordPress is awesome because it allows you to integrate new functionality via a plugin pretty easily. Most plugins are free, and with a little training, you might be able to add these plugins yourself. Be wary, though: it’s not uncommon for new plugins to need some tweaking so they “look good” on your website, or for new plugins to conflict with existing plugins on your website, requiring the assistance of a seasoned programmer to fix. It seems that several times a year, we need to bring in a programmer to help us manage upgrading our sites’ functionality (typically a couple hundred bucks each time), so plan on it.
Optimizing new content, managing Google adwords and Facebook ads campaigns. Obviously, step one is creating the content. But once the content is created, it needs to be proofed, optimized for search, uploaded to your site, and if you’re committed to getting more traffic for your site, submitted to other sites around the web (like Digg, article submission sites, guest blog posts, etc). And of course, you want to create tweets for the content, schedule them for facebook and twitter (and Google plus), and more.
Adding landing pages, creating new content and reconfiguring conversion paths. After you launched your website, you started getting feedback that your visitors were looking for something you didn’t position well (so they were unable to find it, sometimes leaving the site without doing anything). You were hoping people would come to the site to buy something, but what you realized after monitoring things for a few months was that people were looking around and leaving without so much as signing up for your newsletter.
Or consider that you started getting feedback from people that inspired you to create a new offering that you want to display front-and-center on your website. New copy needs to be generated, your menu might need to be changed up, you might want to tweak your home page or add a new page to your website, and update other copy to drive traffic to this new page. Sometimes, these tweaks only require an hour or two of support; other times, you’ve got a full-fledged project on your hands that might take 20 hours and several weeks to execute.
It is really important for you to consider the implications of these variables when you begin thinking about creating a new website. It is very common in my work for me to talk to professionals who’ve spent a huge wad of cash on making their website pretty, with little-to-no funds remaining to actually get results by levaraging social media and engaging in activities that drive traffic.
If you have a limited budget, go the site template route and budget for important money-making activities that directly affect the ROI you are going to experience by creating an ecosystem that attracts customers, builds your credibitility, stokes the fires of raving fans and inspires others to share your work with their friends. Spending all your budget on a pretty design with nothing left over for taking action predestins you to be one of those frustrated professionals who struggles to make their website work for them.
I feel guilty charging people to do something I find so easy.
This is really hard. . .is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? Why does it feel so natural and easy on the inside, yet so damn hard and gut-wrenching to try to “get it out”?
What keeps you from breaking through?
If you find yourself second-guessing your calling, or frustrated by the dig-deep work you have to do to “keep going” down this path toward actualizing your full potential, boy are you ever in good company. I’ve never met an independent professional who didn’t feel the frustration and the fear that evolving as a business owner inevitably brings. Every client I’ve ever had has privately confided in me fears and frustrations and nagging doubts about the path they’ve chosen. Dare I say, nearly every strategy call I’ve ever done (hundreds) has included a confession of sorts that revealed the frustration, the angst, the private pain of the beautiful soul on the other end of the line.
And it seems that the most volatile, frustrating moments appear when it’s time for the client to sit down and write or create products, content, or offerings intended to serve the masses.
In The War of Art, Pressfield reveals, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers (or painters, or musicians, or creatives of any kind) don’t, and that secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance (emphasis added).“
Your biggest block: Your own resistance
Ah, resistance–that internal “block” that keeps us from moving forward or taking action. The whispers of fear, the lies that tell us we won’t succeed or that we’re frauds or that today-isn’t-the-day or this isn’t our time. For those among us who are called to share their gifts with the world, to blaze this unique trail to uncovering their bliss, resistance is an ever-present force that must be confronted with courage as we trust in the call of the Universe for us to give, to expand, to grow.
So what does resistance look like? From The War of Art:
“First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves. . . . If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
“. . . If you find yourself asking, Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? Chances are, you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death… The more scared we are of our work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.“
“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”
I’ve often said that for independent professionals (people who are packaging their knowledge and expertise as authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, etc), growing our businesses can be some of the most intense spiritual work we’ll ever do. So how do we “overcome resistance?”
My friend, Scott Jeffrey, reminds us of a beautiful metaphor for understanding the nature of our true selves (that includes the giving of our sacred selves). In his blog post “Approaching Spiritual Work,” he explains, “Numerous spiritual teachers. . .say that the sun is always shining; we need only remove the clouds. The clouds represent our psychological and spiritual work. The sun is the Light that we are (the Self, with a capital “S”), only realizable when the clouds are removed. Our clouds are many: negative emotions, poor habits and tendencies, false identifications, addiction to our minds and thinking, and so on.
“Examining, understanding, and dissolving these clouds represent the core of serious psycho-spiritual work. That’s why it’s work. Once this is accepted as given, we can approach our darker side with courage, forbearance, and patience. Then, situations that trigger our negative emotions, for example, become opportunities to develop instead of reasons to feel bad about ourselves, getting discouraged about our ‘lack of progress’.”
The battleground for overcoming resistance is in our minds, in undoing our crappy programming and embracing our responsibility to give the world our best and make a difference. Go easy on yourself. This journey isn’t for the faint of heart. Your destiny is assured; the sun is shining bright. May courage take you all the way!
You have to be a great listener to ask great questions
My friend, Don (@DonCooper) recently posted this tweet:
#Sales Tip: Every time you ask a question, you get a point. Every time you ask a question your prospect can’t answer, you get ten points.
YES, that’s such a great way of framing the power of an effective prospecting conversation (Mark LeBlanc calls it a “meaningful conversation”). You’ve heard me talk in other posts about how important it is to know your customer and connect powerfully with them. We do this by *listening well.*
The Art of Listening Well
I don’t know that you can really “teach” someone to listen if they don’t naturally have this predisposition. Listening well, frankly, comes from a holy place: your heart. We listen because we’re interested, we care; we want to make a difference. What we *can* teach each other, or more aptly, remind each other, is that when you’re prospecting or networking, you don’t need to focus or “worry” with pitching people on your services. You just need to listen, really feel into your prospect’s situation, empathize. And asking good questions is key.
The Art of Asking Good Questions
Okay, when Don posted this, I first was gonna tweet some tips, but I felt shackled by the 140-character limit. There is a lot to the art of asking good questions. Tony Robbins is the pro on this one . . . I highly recommend his weekend event, Unleash the Power Within. Ultimately, good questions inspire your prospects to look at something they hadn’t considered before, or to view their problem in a different way. Tony says to ask yourself, What else could this mean?
Stumping the prospect by asking a really powerful question is definitely powerful. And so is asking questions that really make your prospects dig and think about their situation differently right there, in the moment.
Good Questions Can Help a Client Reframe a Problem
I often reframe a problem my client is experiencing with their breakthrough in mind: your problem means you’re doing XXX right, you’re on the path to XXX; the next level requires you to figure this out–this is a good problem to have! Many times, our challenges are calling to the hero within us, showing us where we need to step up in our lives (remember the powerful question: Who must I become to complete this quest?) Reminding who you’re talking to that their “problems” are gateways to bringing out the best in them can be a really powerful reframe. What if this were God, the Universe, or the Spirit’s way of calling to your courage so you could break through? What if this didn’t mean you were failing, but you were on the brink of a breakthrough?
So, for example asking, Have you considered . . . ? or How does believing XXXX serve you? can bring an unconscious pattern to conscious thought. Similarly, asking, What if you tried XXXX? can awaken a perspective in your prospects that has lain dormant. Applying your expertise to their specific challenges and asking questions to help them realize how they are stuck (rather than you telling them, which they are likely to resist) is also a really powerful way to help your clients.
Question: What questions do you ask your prospects to help them see that they need your help?
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“If the muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented.” (from the forward to 
and Patricia Carrington’s 
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You have to be a great listener to ask great questions
