In my recent journeys on Twitter I’ve seen the extremes from “Get 20,000 followers in 30 days” to “it doesn’t matter how many people you have, what matters is the quality of the connection.”

No, I don’t want to sleazily grab 20,000 people on Twitter, my blog, or email list. Yet it’s totally untrue that numbers don’t matter. If you’re running a business, numbers matter in a big way.

But how many people do you really need?

Excruciatingly Boring But Essential Ingredients for Calculating the Numbers

Before we can drill down to the numbers, let me explain two things which go into the calculation.

1. Remembering That People take longer to buy than you might think.
Making a significant purchasing decision can take a long time. Some sales people and copywriters would have you believe that someone makes an emotionally-driven decision within moments of seeing an offer, and then just needs to justify that original decision.

This is true, sorta. But getting to that decision-ready point sometimes takes months or years worth of journeying. If your business really offers the kind of quality help I think you’re offering, then it’s going to change lives, in perhaps small but significant ways.

For this, you need ongoing contact with people while they are deciding. Whether you are reading this by email or on the blog, it’s a good example of how to stay in touch, in a helpful way, with people who are potentially, maybe, possibly interested in what you offer.

The length of time it takes people to say yes affects the number of people you need, because only a small percentage of your followers/subscribers/readers are going to be at the ready-to-decide point at any one time.

2. There are two ways of counting.
Keeping in mind how long people can take to decide, you want to be counting numbers in two ways. The first way is determining how many people are actually connecting with you on a regular basis. How many subscribers or readers do you have? How responsive are they? Do they open your emails or read your blog posts?

The second way is to determine how many new people are finding out about your business every month? Again, a small but hopefully significant percentage will be interested enough to stick around on your email list or blog to get to know you better, thus moving closer to that decision point while in contact with you.

Oh yes. When someone needs help, every moment they are moving towards that decision point of actually getting the help. The question is, are they doing it in proximity to you, or do they hear about you and then forget about you before they decide?

Now for the numbers.

The Numbers: Stick With Me Here

Are you selling $19 ebooks? Or $90 massage sessions? Or $1,500 consulting packages? And how much do you want to earn monthly, yearly?

Let’s leave the “internet millionaire” dream behind and start by aiming for a US$50K/year professional-level income. Fifty thousand dollars is $4,166/month, or $1,000/week, leaving two weeks for vacation. Clearly it would be nice to make more than this with more time off, but let’s start here.

For the $90 per session thang, you need eleven or twelve sessions per week to make that kind of cashola. To get much above US$50K, you’ll need to use other streams of income like teaching groups and selling products. But that’s another article.

If half your clients come once a month, and half come twice a month, then you need 18 once-a-month clients, and 14 twice-a-month clients, which comes to $4140. A total of 32 regular clients. And if clients last about four months before moving on, then you need 96 clients for the year. Call it an even hundred.

Of course, it’s wonderful when some stick around for longer, maybe years. And some will leave sooner. It’s just how it goes.

Some people love noodling the numbers. Some people hate it. Either way, take a moment and breathe now. Ahhh… We’re just taking a snapshot.

So How Many People Do You Really Need?

What’s your experience with how many people actually come in who are interested in your services?

It depends. For first-time connections at a party, networking event, or elsewhere, probably not so many convert to clients immediately. Yet those people you see several times who keep saying, “I gotta make an appointment with you!” will eventually come in.

All told, let’s say three out of ten people who say they are interested eventually turn into clients. That’s 30%. One hundred clients is 30% of 334 interested people.

For our sample massage therapist, she would need to be in touch with 334 interested people in order to maintain 11 to 12 sessions per week without famine periods. And, of course, to find that many interested people, many more people than that would need to hear about her.

There you go. If our massage therapist can build and maintain a list of 350 interested people, and she has an effective strategy for reminding and inviting people in to get the help they really need, that number should maintain her.

Three hundred and fifty people? That’s not too bad. However, maybe getting a list that large seems insurmountable to you. Or perhaps you have more than that on a list and they aren’t coming in.

Your numbers may be different, but if you take a few minutes, I bet you can work it out, even if you’re just making estimated guesses.

So, once you know your numbers, what’s next? Let’s take a look at some of the critical details.

Keys to Making the Numbers Work

• You gotta have heart.

We’ve been talking numbers, and the numbers are very important. However, remember that each of those numbers is a real human being, with real needs. Two things help.

Being present in your heart, anchored in love, helps people know there is something to connect to. People like the Dalai Lama, or my spiritual guide, exhibit this in a big way. Others feel attracted to be in their presence.

You don’t need to run it that big, but taking time for spiritual practice and heart connection means that the people on your list know you are really *there* and may be more likely to come on in.

• Stay in touch.

I mean show up. If you have an email newsletter or blog, send it as regularly as you can. Once a week is great. Twice a month works. Once a month is on the edge of being ineffective.

What to say? Help them. They are hurting, so trust that they want and need your help!

For our massage therapist friend, the best thing to do is get her hands on someone. But there are LOTS of things she can tell people about how to care for themselves, insights on relieving stress or pain in their body, that will increase their trust and connection with her.

• Keep reaching out.

I’ve noticed that going from zero to one is harder than going from one to ten. Getting to your initial numbers will take some concentration. Take the time you need to nurture the love in your heart, reach out to friends, clients. This way you’ll find where your ideal clients hang out. And then invite them in.

The easiest way to invite them in is to start your writing, even if you have pitifully small numbers now. Then your articles can reach out to others.

A client of ours wrote four articles, and one of them really resonated strongly with his clients. That one article was forwarded to others, and brought in new referrals and new subscribers to his list.

You don’t need huge numbers to have a healthy business, but you do need some. Whether you do it on Twitter, a blog, or an email list, reach out and start to build relationships with the folks who need you.

“So what was the leap you made, Mark, from having a just-okay private practice to really experiencing momentum?”

Kate Williams, my collaboratrix at Heart of Business, had put the question to me. She had admitted that although she had years of experience in small business, and although she had helped a university bookstore quadruple sales, she had never made the big leap while being self-employed.

You may be wondering the same thing:”What is really going to lift me out of the just-okay, feast-or-famine, never-really-secure private practice into having a solid business with some momentum?”

Ingredients of a Pre-Momentum, Mostly-Sorta-Okay Practice

You need these four things if you are going to get more than one random client a year:

1.An Identified problem that you help solve.
2. An effective service or product that solves that problem.
3. Some kind of ongoing contact with folks who have that problem, so they know you can help them. (Otherwise known as “marketing.”)
4. An effective (slime-free) process that turns people who express interest “Oh, really, you help with that?” into clients, “Oh yes! Please help me. Can I write you a check?” (Sometimes called “sales.”)

If you are reasonably personable, have decent communication skills, and you have those four things, you can probably get clients on at least a semi-regular basis, enough to prove that, heck yeah, you actually have a business.

True, each of those ingredients is slightly more complicated than that. But not by much. The question is, if you are already kinda, sorta getting clients on a kinda-sorta regular basis, how do you make the leap to true momentum? You know, with waiting lists and no “famine” periods?

You’ve Probably Heard This Before

Momentum requires content. Writing, audio, video. The reason? You just can’t connect with enough people through one-on-one conversations to really attain momentum. Well, maybe you can, but I personally like to sleep, spend time with my family, and see friends occasionally. And yeah, eat meals.

When you create content, you are creating a sustainable way to connect with people who need you. Although content isn’t the only ingredient in momentum, it’s a big one.

Can You Be Both the Cool Kid and the Nerd?

The cool kid in school may have had lots of flaws, perhaps ones that you were especially aware of. But they were cool. And so lots of people flocked around this kid. Your business needs to be “cool.” Attractive. Interesting. Comfortable to be around.

But cool alone won’t get you business momentum.

When you’re behind on your homework and you have an essay due tomorrow, who do you ask for help, the cool kid or the nerd? That’s right, you ask the nerd, because that nerd is getting straight A’s and actually has a chance at helping you.

Your business also has to be that nerd. You’ve got to demonstrate that you know what the heck you’re talking about, which means more than just being knowledgeable. Can you do the hard work of taking complicated, esoteric, or difficult-to-explain concepts in your field of expertise and make them understandable and digestible by folks seeking information?

Probably most of your colleagues can’t, in simple language, explain what they do or why it works. If someone asks them “why” or “how” suddenly they land in glazed-eye land, because it feels like it would take a two-year intensive to explain what they do.  You’ve got to be able to translate what may be years of experience into meaningful bites.

If you can be cool and nerdy in your content, then two things start to happen:

1. More and more clients come around, because they think you’re cool AND because you can help them with their homework.
2. More and more of your colleagues start referring to you. They teach a class, and they are mentioning your name, or passing out one of your articles, because you’ve explained something that they haven’t.

Suddenly you’re a leader. Suddenly, momentum begins to happen.

Is It Really That Simple?

A business with momentum does seem to have an ungodly number of moving parts to it, and so it’s not exactly paint-by-number, or everyone would have one. However, it is very attainable, if you’re willing to do the work that leaders do to become leaders.

Start right now with three steps:

• First: Identify two or three identifying personality traits. It’s kinda like looking in the mirror, so you have to get over not liking your haircut. Connect with your heart, and become conscious of two or three parts of your personality that make you who you are. Then make sure they are consistently present in your content.

Examples: do you tend to have a sharp wit, always with the quick comment? Do you have a droll, dead-pan sense of humor? Do you have a gentleness about you?

Of course you’re a multi-dimensional being. But pick “trademark” traits that you can bring out in your writing on a consistent enough basis that people get to know you.

• Second: What kind of Divine quality do you carry in your heart? A personality without a deeper sense of presence can seem pretty thin and artificial. Your deeper heart is a great place to come from. When you are feeling ungrounded or that your writing is somewhat hither-thither, this depth can provide an anchor to return to.

This awareness makes sure that your heart is included and that you don’t end up feeling like you’re in some adolescent popularity contest. Speaking from experience, I was definitely not the cool kid.

I strongly recommend “The Unveiling Your Jewel” exercise for clarifying this Divine quality that lies in each of our hearts. That’s why I include it in our free give-away.

• Third: Simplify a difficult-to-explain concept. Pick something in your field that is difficult to explain, yet common. Something that you and your colleagues end up spending long minutes unsuccessfully trying to explain to clients.

Analogies are great tools for this, like using the Cool Kid and the Nerd to explain an esoteric business topic like “branding content” that makes it understandable. Yes, it will take some effort.

Why This Isn’t Artificial

Artificial is fake. If you were to totally make up a personality that you don’t have and try to carry it off, it would feel awkward to you and weird to your audience. I’m merely suggesting you emphasize things that are already authentically within you.

The essence of our spiritual journeys is to wake up, to become conscious. If you can consciously use some of your natural gifts and personality flavors to connect with more and more people who need what you do, go for it!

As you do, you just might find your business slowly, surely, and organically moving out of the awkward feast-or-famine private practice into the flight of a business with momentum.

p.s. Something for now, something for November.

True to our word, we’ve bottled up some of the deliciousness that helps. This week we’re taking part in a collaboration called “The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit.” I mentioned it earlier this week, and it’s still available through Friday.

Here’s what you can do: if you are drawn to get it, get it. [affiliate link] It’s a great deal all on it’s own. But more than that, because each of these folks has momentum in their business, take a look at each of the products and see if you can identify how each of us has applied the Cool Kid and Nerd principles in our product presentation.

Take a look right here: Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit

In November, we roll out the big kahuna. Our four-night, five-day live Path to Profitability Retreat, here in Portland, dives deeply into this topic of momentum.

Yes, it’s July and we’re talking about November. We’re already working on it over here, and it’s always more enlivening to be preparing it for real people. So to help us out with this, we’re offering an extremely early-bird registration price. With the payment plan you could have the whole thing easily paid for before you even go, and so by November it would feel like a gift!

The number of seats is very limited, because it’s in-person and we want to make sure each person has the support to go deep and do the work in a nourishing, effective way.

Join me in Portland in November! Register now, and get it for half price.

As always, if you have any questions, please ask.

The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit- Featuring Creating Heart-Centered Websites.

Good morning, and happy Monday: I’ve got some good news for you, but you might find it annoying.

The good news is that we’ve decided to participate in one of those promotions, where twenty people chip in a product, and it all gets sold for the price of one. If you’ve been considering getting Creating Heart-Centered Websites from us, then this week is a great time to get it, because of everything else that comes with it.

But, you might also be annoyed.

Annoyed by the “Million Bonuses” Type of Promotion?

I don’t blame you one bit. I am, too. But please hear me out.

I have to admit Kate and I had mixed feelings about participating in this promotion. But when we sat in our hearts, we saw three things that we felt made it worthwhile for you and for us.

1. There are people participating that I have tremendous respect for. Of the twenty participating, I can stand by these five:

Brad Smart–whose book I studied when I was looking to hire someone and become a company.
Andrea Lee–who has a tremendous amount of integrity and is close friends with one of my mastermind buddies.
Robert Middleton–who has a heart of gold and whose book I used as a required text with my clients before I wrote my own book.
Susan Harrow–whom I’ve interviewed for our online community The Business Oasis.
Molly Gordon–one of my mastermind buddies and a dear friend whose integrity is so high I can’t measure it.

To get the products of these five people plus our own Creating Heart-Centered Websites for such a low cost is well worth it, and I would feel fantastic about you having them.

As for the other 14, I simply don’t know their materials well enough to say anything, but these are folks who have reputations as good people. The others are: Arthur Joseph, Bill Baren, Brad Fallon, Christine Kloser, David Wood, Elyse Hope Killoran, Jen Blackert, Joe Rubino, Ken McArthur, Lynne Klippel, Mary Allen and Eva Gregory, Michele Pariza Wacek, Nancy Marmolejo, and Patricia Fripp.

2. The intention of the entire package is coming from a desire to help and give. I had a great conversation with Bill Baren, who is hosting the entire promotion, and I think he’s doing a really good thing with this.

3. Admission: We’re needing to experiment in reaching more people. The teachings of Heart of Business are a little bit outside the “norm” of business teachings. Our strong spiritual component, and desire to support gentleness, ease, and heart in business deserves a greater audience if it’s going to tip the business as usual scale toward heart-centered business as it should be. We’ve been looking for a way to effectively bring the message that love and spirit can be present in effective business practices.

I had already turned down several other similar opportunities because they didn’t feel right. This one did.

I think you’ll be pleased.

The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit is a really good deal, even if you only use two or three of the twenty products. And, over time, as your business grows, I think you’ll be really happy to have all twenty of these in your library.

Check it out for yourself: The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit

Good Until Midnight Pacific Time, Friday June 26

After Friday, June 26, this will no longer be available. So jump on it now if you’ve been considering getting Creating Heart-Centered Websites and haven’t yet.

Or, if you’ve been considering getting any of the other products on the list, this is the time to take advantage of the low price. At least take a look and see what your heart tells you:
The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit

I trust our experiment will really help you and your business. If you have any questions, reactions, insights, feel free to comment below.

You fall in love with something that has changed your life. That’s totally normal, and definitely worth celebrating. And guess what? You are uniquely suited to get it out to others. So you take the training, cross your fingers, and pump out a website.

Ta-da! You’re in business!

And you write articles, and blog, and network all about what you do, and chant, and pray, and do whatever you do to bring in clients.

Uh, clients? Yoo-hoo? Where are you?

Why A Business Exists

Before we go to the land of Where the Clients Are, one thing must be set straight. A business exists and thrives because it helps a particular someone with a problem they are facing.

You can do lots of things that worth doing. Art, writing, healing, gardening, cooking, parenting. Lots and lots of amazing things that have no need to be attached to a commercial enterprise and still are fantastically worthwhile. Keep doin’ ‘em!

However, if you want your business to bring in revenue, as in people who are wanting to pay for your products and services, then it needs to help them with some problem. If you help people solve a problem, then you have a business. If you do something because you love it and it’s joyful, then you have an avocation.

Of course, the ideal is to blend the two. But if all you have is the avocation, then you aren’t living in client land.

Let me say that I know you want to help people. And if that’s true, then let’s just define your business a little differently than you may have already.

You don’t have an accounting business. Or a coaching business. Or a design business. Or a food business. Or a…. So then what do you have?

You have a Who-Who-What

The trick is not to define your business by what you do, but by who you serve, and what they are struggling with. I call this the Who-Who-What, because it names two components of Who you are talking to, and it’s explicit about the problem, the What. Demographics, psychographics, and the problem.

Hey, are you paying attention? This may seem a little boring or academic to you, “psychographic-gobble-gobble” but that is precisely why so many businesses struggle.

If you can nail down your Who-Who-What, everything else becomes 1000 times easier. If you don’t nail it down, you just might struggle for years and years.

First, Three Examples

For instance, instead of a relationship or Nonviolent Communication facilitator, you help couples who feel hopeless about getting stuck in arguments and want to communicate with compassion. http://www.wiseheartpdx.org/

Instead of being an acupuncturist, you help/treat children and adults with chronic pain who are looking for lasting pain relief without medications or surgery. http://www.acupuncture.vpweb.com/

Instead of a sustainability consultant, you help business leaders who want to operate sustainably but don’t know how to make it profitable. http://ren-new.blogspot.com/

Now the Three Components

Component One: The Who demographic. A demographic is some observable characteristic or trait. In the examples above, demographics were: “couples,” “children and adults,” and “business leaders.” All three of those characteristics can be verified by witnesses.

Component Two: The Who psychographic. A psychographic is an unobservable identity that is often related to a belief or value. From above, psychographics are “who value compassion in their relationship,” “who want to avoid medications and surgery” and “leaders who want to operate sustainably.”

The psychographic is a little trickier, because it’s not always as blatant. But in each case it’s there if you listen for it.

Component Three: The What. This is the problem the client faces, hopefully in their own words. Our three examples: “hopeless about getting stuck in arguments,” “suffering from chronic pain,” and “don’t know how to make sustainability profitable.”

Well, there you go. Who-Who-What. Easy-peasy, yah? Except… not so easy. Let me give you just a few helping points.

Keys to the Who-Who-What

• This is an incredibly tender process.

In our Opening the Moneyflow 6-month course, the first six weeks are spent working with the Who-Who-What within the Customer Focused Story. And people tend to find that it is a surprisingly tender process.

The issue here is that your business changes from reactive: “I’ll help whoever shows up,” to proactive and planting your flag: “I’m helping *these* people with *this* problem.” It takes strength to do that, yes, and it’s also very vulnerable to take a stand.

Make space for your tenderness as you begin planting your flag with a Who-Who-What.

• Yes, it’s okay to narrow your focus.

The big question everyone asks is: “Aren’t I going to lose clients if I limit who I want to attract?” Here’s the short answer: No.

The slightly longer answer is when you get clear and specific, people respond. And if you have a viable Who-Who-What, a LOT of people will respond. And how many do you need, really, to have a viable business?

Plus, you can’t save the world, y’know? it takes some real humility, but when when we realize that we’re just little people in this big world, then it’s okay to focus on the folks we want to help and trust that everyone else will get the help they need, perhaps elsewhere.

• Everything is in the reaction.

You know you’ve got a solid Who-Who-What when someone says, “Oh, that’s me!” Or, they say, “Really? I know someone who needs to talk to you.”

You do not want to hear, “That’s nice.” Or “How interesting.” An effective Who-Who-What will immediately, without anyone having to do it consciously, bring up faces and names of people who fit.

This is because the Who-Who-What is a name. When you hear your name, you turn your head. Your name wakes you up.

It probably won’t be simple, and you may not get clarity in one afternoon. Yet, if you’re willing to focus in on the incredibly tender process of claiming your Who-Who-What, then everything else, from marketing to strategic decisions, will be so, so much easier.

And the clients will come out of the woodwork.

You may be familiar with the principle of tithing–giving a certain percentage of your earnings to those in need. You may have also heard that what you give will come back to you twice-over, three-times over, seven-fold, or ten-fold. Different traditions have different formulas.

Some people swear by it. Others just end up swearing as their financial obligations mount. Which begs the question: Does tithing really work to increase abundance, or is it a bunch of new-age nonsense? Do you give in order to succeed, or because you’ve already had some success?

What If the Loaves and Fishes Run Out?

My spiritual teacher, who was visiting recently from Jerusalem to teach here in the U.S., loves to cook, and had prepared some food. He started handing out portions to folks, and my friend was one of the first to get some. She had received a generous portion, but she became increasingly anxious as the portions became smaller and smaller with each additional serving.

It soon became clear that some people wouldn’t get any at all.

Since he -IS- after all, her spiritual teacher, she began to ask her heart what was going on. Why should she get so much when others received so little? Her heart showed her, in a flash that we are all links in the chain of giving. Just because she got a larger piece doesn’t mean that she should keep it all.

The teaching was about wakefulness, responsibility, and the true nature of generosity. She had to participate in the giving and not just the receiving.

Tithing Is Not Charity

Charity is defined by Merriam-Webster as “generosity or helpfulness… a gift… benevolent goodwill.”

A tithe, on the other hand, is “a… part paid… as a tax.” “obligation… small tax or levy.”

The Sufi teachings say this: to give generously in charity is a great thing. But before charity comes an obligation. If you receive abundantly, you owe some of what you received to those less fortunate. Why do you owe this? Why can’t you just keep it? After all, you worked hard to get it.

The tithe is a recognition that we are all interconnected, that none of us is independent. It is impossible to amass any amount of wealth solely on your own efforts. Tithing is recognizing the contributions that others have made to your success. By paying this obligation, you recognize that you aren’t the source at the beginning of wealth, and you aren’t the stopping point at the end of wealth. You are in the middle. Letting some of the wealth you receive flow downstream is the best way to assure that you stay in the flow.

So how do you tithe? How much? When? And is it only about giving–what about the receiving back ten-fold? How does that work?

Keys to Playing the Middle

• There is no vending machine.

Wouldn’t it be nice if life worked like a vending machine? Put in a prayer, get out a candy bar? Put in a donation, get it back doubled? Although some people would have you believe this is true, it ain’t.

Our relationship with the Divine, and the world around us, is more complex–it IS a relationship. And no relationship works like a vending machine. It has more subtlety to it. This means when you give, give whole-heartedly, from your natural generosity and not simply as a strategy to try and force an outpouring of abundance.

And… just keep your eyes open… I wonder what you notice does come back?

• Yes, you do have to do the dishes.

Tithing is a spiritual obligation that comes when you receive abundance, to acknowledge your place in the middle of the flow. No one can take 100% credit for what comes his or her way in terms of wealth, and tithing is simply the inspired action that grows out of acknowledging this healthy humility.

However, this obligation is not like your parents forcing you to do the dishes or mow the lawn. If you’ve ever experienced the joy and happiness that comes from giving a gift, then you already know how enriching tithing is. Marshall Rosenberg, author of the inspiring book Nonviolent Communication, says that human beings are happiest when they are trying to make life more wonderful for each other.

• If you ain’t got it, you can’t give it.

I’ve seen people make donations by borrowing on a credit card, only to feel crushed under the weight of this debt later. Remember that tithing is not about you being the source of the giving. It’s merely acknowledging that you are in the middle. You can’t give what you don’t have.

How much to give? Different traditions have different formulas. The Sufis teachings suggest an annual tithe of 2.25% of all you own free and clear. This means that Sufis total up what they have, subtract what they owe, and give 2.25% of what’s left to help support those who are poor. Many often give more than that, but that’s the minimum.

If your business is feeling stagnant and you don’t have a tithing plan in place, it might be time to add this part of the flow to your giving and receiving.

Okay, forget all this organic growth stuff. Let’s say you hit the big time and suddenly dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people are flooding toward your business.

Exciting, isn’t it? Sure, exciting as a funeral.

If Your Business Isn’t Ready, This Could Be The End

It’s easy to want to hit it big. But the truth is rapid expansion is the most dangerous time for any business.

Am I against you succeeding? No way. I want you to flourish and thrive and enjoy your business. But I don’t want you to get flooded out.

Why Rapid Growth Is So Dangerous

When you grow, everything grows. I mean EVERYTHING. Your income grows, and so do the number of requests for help. Your database grows, and so do the number of complaints and negative feedback. The number of orders grow, and the number of mistakes you make grows, too.

Dealing with 1000 orders is very different than dealing with 10. Dealing with 20 clients is very different than dealing with 5.

A True Story

Once upon a time, there was someone who was excellent at what she did. Excellent. And naturally, the word spread.

What’s more, she accelerated her growth through really smart marketing. As has happened to many people, she even received so much traffic to her website that her servers were overwhelmed at one point.

Very cool, eh?

Then Things Started to Go South

Instead of answering emails cheerfully within a day, it was taking her two or three weeks to get back to people, simply because of the volume. She had more clients than she could handle, and they started to complain about her mistakes to each other, to people they knew, to everyone but her.

Plus there were hundreds of requests for services, requests she couldn’t fill, because it was just her.

And people started to drift away…

Do You See Where This Is Going?

It IS possible to turn a situation like this around. But it will definitely take some real effort and a new track record to get the good opinion of the marketplace back again.

What’s going on here spiritually? Well, it’s kind of like the old “hand in the cookie jar” story. You put your hand in the cookie jar, grab a bunch of cookies, but then your fist with all the cookies is too big for the neck of the jar. So you have to let go of all the cookies save one to get your hand out.

It’s about trusting that you’ll have what you need. When something seems too big to be true, it probably is. My experience is that the next right step always is something that feels real and grounded.

So are big jumps never permissible? When is it okay to blow the lid off and really “go for it”? Is there a way to grow rapidly, without risking your business?

Sure there is. Let’s take a look.

Keys to Safe and Rapid Growth

Because you care about your business so much, and probably really creative, you’ve most likely resisted implementing systems in your business, wanting to make sure that loving care is put into every detail.

For growth, you’ll want to start to identify where things are repetitive, and where the loving care can be put into a system that handles repetitive tasks. No, don’t put any less love and care into it. Just start to think about what details aren’t hurt when they are systematized.

The best time to do this is before you really need to. It helps to make sure that you have the time to put love into creating a system, instead of doing it in a panic with 100 upset customers breathing down your back.

You can’t do everything. A one-person successful business is a myth: every successful business requires the efforts of more than one person. And so you need to learn how to delegate, outsource, and hire people to help you, without breaking the bank.

This takes practice. Start practicing in small ways like hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a month, just to get used to the idea. As you gain more experience, you’ll be able to outsource more and more. And eventually you’ll be comfortable hiring and allowing others to help you when you start to grow.

When you have thousands of people wanting help from you, the only sensible thing you can provide is a product. If you’re a service business, or even if you are creating things, but doing it in an old-fashioned, loving hand-crafted way, you’ll want to start to think “scalable.”

What kind of a product can you experiment with creating? Your first one probably won’t be a home run, so if you start creating your first information products now, you’ll get the hang of what your clients really want and need.

You may never want to grow to be really big. But even if you want to be moderately comfortable, these three steps: systems, hiring help, and having products are the foundational pieces you need in order to handle rapid growth.

Because it can happen. And instead of a prelude to your business’ funeral, it can be the joyous celebration it should be.

Note: This is a personal request, and not necessarily about Heart of Business. And yet, at the same time, our businesses are deeply woven into the communities from which they are born. Heart of Business rests deeply into the friends, family and community that surround my wife and I. I wanted to use the Heart of Business reach to support this very close friend of ours and the amazing work she is doing.

My friend Amanda is a professor at Portland State University and teaches some amazing things about “enmification” — which is how we make enemies… and how not to do that.

She’s had a dream for years of participating in a compassionate listening reconciliation between Germans and Jews- like myself, she was raised Jewish.

She also had pretty strong heart-guidance that she wasn’t supposed to go into debt to finance the trip, which will cost at least a couple thousand dollars, including airfare and etc.

My Testimonial

Amanda and her whole family are close to our family- we’re “smooshta” family. My wife and I were at the birth of her son, and we live about 10 blocks from each other and frequently share meals and other family events. I say this to reveal that this is not an unbiased testimonial.

At the same time, Amanda is a powerhouse in her own right. She has been doing serious work in the field of community building, community organizating, conflict resolution, and what she calls “enmification.” She’s a professor, a spiritual teacher, a community organizer, and a musician.

And she has the opportunity to go to Germany very soon to participate in this reconcialiation program.

In Her Own Words

Dear Friends and Family:

As many of you know, I have been very interested in engaging in some kind of a reconciliation dialogue between Germany/Germans and Jews/Descendants of Holocaust Survivors for the past twelve years. In the last year I learned about a couple of different organizations that facilitate dialogue between Germans and Jews, and I have newly decided to travel to Germany this summer to participate in a process for Jews and Germans to transform our legacy of conflict.

I am sending this letter out for multiple purposes. First, I want everyone to know that I am doing this, and to also to let you know why I am doing this. The pain of the Holocaust has touched me deeply, and taking action toward healing is momentous for me. I hope to engender your support and prayers for my journey (physical, emotional and spiritual), and anticipate that I will take comfort in knowing you are sending encouragement in my direction.

Second, I am fundraising the expense of this adventure. When I first imagined engaging in a dialogue process a dozen years ago, I imagined that “Germany” would pay for this process as a form of restitution. While I am still receptive to that possibility, should it materialize, I have realized that by inviting my friends and family into that supportive role, I can find even more valuable support to go through this healing process with strength and certainty. I have set up a PayPal donation link on my website to simplify the process of contributing.

To donate financial support of any amount toward the cost of this adventure, please go to my website and click on the PayPal donate button at: http://web.pdx.edu/~abyron. Even a small donation has profound meaning to me.

The organization that I have decided to work with emphasizes the Jewish concept of Teshuvah, which speaks to the transformation that happens when we are able to “return,” or atone, in an effort to heal our wounding. The dialogue process creates a safe space for participants to tell their stories, to learn from one another, and to make amends for the tragedies of the Holocaust. More information about the process and the hosting organization is available at http://www.one-by-one.org/

In teaching about Conflict Resolution, I continue to tell the story of my mother’s exodus from Germany during World War II, and her family’s (successful) struggle to start over in a new land. The part of the story that has been most profound for me is the lack of justice available to them as Jews in Germany. This personal interest I have in issues of social justice has inspired a life-long professional emphasis on individual and collective responses to violence, with particular attention to responses that can address the direct and intergenerational trauma resulting from genocide. Dialogue is one of those responses.

I am not sure what all will come from this process, but I expect some creative expression to emerge during and after this experience. I intend to document the process through writing, art, music, and/or photography. And I look forward to sharing my experiences with you after I return. I will be available to share my stories, either informally or as part of a more structured presentation on reconciliation and healing.

Thank you all for considering my request!

The Donation Button

In case you missed it up above, here is a direct link to her PayPal donation button:

Donate to Reconciliation

(Some folks have told me they have trouble with this link. For an alternative, go directly to Amanda’s page, and look for the “Donate” link in the upper right.

Five bucks, ten bucks, twenty bucks, fifty bucks. If this speaks to you, and your heart says “yes” then please do give a little to her. It will mean she gets to do this really important work, and it won’t be a financial burden on her family. As you can imagine, university professors just don’t make that much money. Plus, it’s part of the healing to have her lifted there by many hands.

Every small business owner has the same worries: where’s the money coming from? Whether you are running a $1.5 million landscaping firm, a $300,000 consulting practice, or you are a self-employed service provider scraping by on less than $40K per year, you probably, at one time or another, have felt financial pinch.

It’s true. Most people dream that once the business brings in more revenue, the worry stops. But after working with clients at all different levels of income, I can tell you it doesn’t work like that. Almost everyone deals with horrible, sinking feelings in their stomach.

Instead of just outearning the money grumblies, which tend to grow as fast as you feed them, I recommend facing them.

Here’s a Question I Want You to Answer Honestly

How much time do you spend each week with your finances?

If you are like most small business owners, the answer is probably somewhere between zero and, “I had to spend 30 minutes paying the bills–thank God that’s over with.”

So let’s just say that you have someone you love very much, maybe you are married to him or her. And then let’s say you spent somewhere between zero and “I had to spend 30 minutes kissing up to her, so she wouldn’t feel neglected. Thank God, that’s over with.”

Are you seeing the same pattern I’m seeing?

Most schools don’t require any kind of financial fitness class, and so it’s no surprise that most people are uncomfortable (terrified, to be more honest) to spend more than the absolute minimum time required to keep from getting the electricity turned off and the car repossessed.

If you are serious about having a healthy relationship with your finances, I want to recommend that you start to spend some quality time with your numbers.

Whoa! Before you panic and <click away> from this article out of self-preservation, I’m not talking about becoming an accountant.

I know it can look intimidating, even for accountants. I had two certified accountants in a Heart of Money class, and getting this intimate with their own finances made them both extremely uncomfortable.

But it also brought up healing, comfort, and abundance breakthroughs for everyone, including them.

There is a full-blown, finance-clearing exercise in the Heart of Money class called “Being Polite with Money.” But I’m going to teach you the stripped-down version that my wife and I use every week: The Kitchen Table Financial Summit, a.k.a. “The Money Meeting.”

First Thing You Need to Do Is Schedule It

Schedule it at a time when you aren’t already exhausted. And, schedule twice as much time as you think you’ll need, at least until you get used to it.

Second Step–What do you have?

Go through your accounts (you do have a separate business and personal account, right?). Find out how much is in checking, and which checks or charges haven’t been processed yet. Make note of how much is in savings for each account. I also track my expected revenue–both certain revenue (from pre-existing contracts), and potential revenue (from upcoming classes, or potential clients that are close to a decision point.)

Third Step–What do you owe?

It’s a fairly good bet that most of your bills are the same amount each month, or close enough. If you have a cash flow problem, you track how much the bill is for, and when the due date is.

Fourth step–Face it all

If you have plenty of money to pay your bills, sit in your heart and feel what that feels like. It might feel great. And… you might be surprised. Many people unconsciously create leaks to overspend “extra” money until they come back down to zero. You might want to read the article I wrote on getting to “extra” in your profitability.

If you don’t have enough to pay your bills, face how that feels, too. Make space in your heart for any anger, despair, or helplessness that you feel.

My wife and I have at least one of these meetings every week, to spend quality, honest time with our finances. How else are you going to get a handle on it?

Read some practical points on how to hold a “Kitchen Table Finance Summit” below. I also include a special pdf example of what we write up for the meeting.

Keys to Holding a Kitchen Table Financial Summit

• The healing is in the combination of the numbers and the emotions. That’s why you want to give time to the meeting. It takes time to figure out what the numbers really are. It also takes time to be with your emotions. If you are scared, sad, angry, you need to give space to those emotions. Use your heart to make space for them. My free workbook has a great practice for accessing those emotions and moving through them.

• If possible, find a partner to do this with you. I can’t overestimate the value of nonjudgmental support. My wife helps me. You could easily do this with a business partner. Or find a friend or colleague you trust. and help support each other through these meetings. Each person can take responsibility for one aspect–either totaling the accounts, or tracking the bills.

• Don’t balk at the time commitment. It will take a fair amount of time in the beginning. But once you get in the groove, you will find your meetings flowing more smoothly. I mean, you want to have a better relationship with your finances, right? Spend the quality time with it, and you will have it, I promise.

Download this pdf for a fictitious example of the two sheets–accounts and bills–that we fill out for our money meetings. Click here.

p.s. Only a handful of spots left in The Heart of Money Transformational Journey

So, you sit down to have a Kitchen Table Financial Summit, and instead of biting into your finances, you bite off your partner’s head. Oops. Ouch.

Family harmony is just one of the several reasons you may want to take The Heart of Money Transformational Journey. Can you imagine sitting down with your partner and not getting triggered over the bills? Being able to have a real, honest, compassionate conversation about money?

Or, forget about a partner, how about just being able to face your finances in the eye, and feel calm and grounded instead of freaked out and upset?

The Heart of Money Transformational Journey, because if money issues are banging up your heart, then you can be sure they are also affecting your marketing and business.

We started out May 1st, 2009 with 80 spots open. By May 18, we had 42 spots left. Then, in the last 5 days, almost all of them are taken. As I write this, only 8 spots are left.

Yes, there is an early-bird deadline June 1st, when the price goes up two hundred dollars. But, I’m not sure there will be any left by then.

If it’s in your heart, check it out now.

Do you make time to be with your finances? What’s your experience, opinion, or question about how to handle the money grumblies? Let’s discuss in the comments…

In a post yesterday someone I respect highly, Chris Guillebeau wrote an engaging, passionate post on Why People Hate Marketers. In it, he laid out a whole bunch of things about marketing that I totally agree with: marketing is about trust and building relationships. That using scarcity marketing to push people and manipulate them doesn’t feel good, and in many cases isn’t necessary.

His post was in response to an email from someone named John who suggested he use an email opt-in list to build an empire. The way John expressed himself did seem to be focused primarily on empire-building and not so much on trust and relationship-building.

Chris wrote that he was bothered by this, and he felt that “freely give, freely receive” works just fine for him. And it has. Not only is he happy and living the life he longs for, but if you also want to talk numbers, he’s reached hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, and he sells a good number of his information products, that supports him.

And, if you haven’t yet read his 279 Days to Overnight Success, go get it now.

The One Big Reaction I Had

If you read his post, he doesn’t directly say that email opt-in is evil, and I’m sure he doesn’t believe it, because he does have an email opt-in series on his site. I’m sure he knows and probably agrees with what I’m about to write.

But, reading his post, you could draw the conclusion that email opt-in is a manipulation, and that you shouldn’t ever do it. Let me give you a different perspective.

Here’s what my life looks like:

• I run a business;
• I’m a father of twin 6-month old boys about to crawl;
• I also spend a good deal of time keeping up with friends and community;
• I try to stay physically active and eat well;
• Finally- there’s the laundry. And the dishes.

As I’m writing this, I have to stop writing, and take a break to go help my wife feed the twins. I’ll be back in about 20 minutes.

Ahhh… twins fed, changed, no poop-on-dad disasters, or other unseemly events, and they go back to sleep with my wife for another hour or so.

I love my life, and it is very full. It seems as if I literally don’t stop from the moment I get up until the time I go to bed. And, even once the boys get a little older, life will continue to be full.

I Need Reminders

Some things I can be pro-active about, some I just don’t have the capacity for. There’s a workshop I’m wanting to take that two of my spiritual teachers are giving. If I hadn’t been on the opt-in email list, and if they hadn’t sent me, I dunno, five, six, seven reminders, I wouldn’t have gotten around to registering, and I might’ve missed it completely.

I created an opt-in email list for our upcoming Heart of Money course built around a free teleclass I gave on the topic.

With issues around money, I know a few things. One, that a good number of our readers are interested, but not everyone. Two, that issues around money are highly uncomfortable, emotionally-charged things, and as such are painful. Three, that humans tend to avoid, deny, or go unconscious around painful issues.

If someone wanted to take the course, needed to take the course, I’m not sure they would get to the point where they would actually register without getting regular reminders to break through the autopilot/unconsciousness of daily life.

And the folks on our regular email list, or blog readers, have been getting far fewer reminders of the course, mostly in the form of reminders of the free teleclass, so that there is less noise for them to ignore if they just aren’t interested.

Of Course Anything Can Be Evil

There are people who pull every psychological trick out of the book with their opt-in lists. There are definitely people who prey on fears, and use hype, scare, and false-scarcity tactics to drive sales.

Don’t do that.

And, don’t shy away from using email opt-in from a genuine desire to be of service. Your email opt-in list may be very helpfully cutting through dirty diapers, piles of dishes, and heaps of laundry to help the very people who need you most and can’t quite get to you on their own power.

I’m happy to take all comers. Do you think I’m just rationalizing? Or does this ring true for you? Other perspectives?

One of the members of The Business Oasis was having trouble filling a course and had listed a number of bonuses and other types of things she tried at the last minute to bring up the numbers, without much success.

Here’s my reply to her, outlining the seven necessary parts to filling a course. I’ve written about each of these in much more depth, but an overview is worthwhile having for those of you who are trying to fill your courses and offers.

We now have a multi-year (as in 4-5 year) track record of selling out most of our courses. And when we’ve failed to do so, it’s because we missed one or more of these pieces.

1. Needs and Desires, Not Process

Have an offer that absolutely hits on the head both a need and a desire of your audience. One that speaks really clearly to something they are struggling with.

It’s painful to tell you, because you love what you do so much, as I love what I do, but no one really wants to learn about “The X Technique.” The only ones who might, are people who want to run a business like yours. But not your potential clients.

I had a miserable time filling our marketing course, until a friend mentioned that I should rename it. So “Focus on Marketing” (X Technique, ugh!) became “Opening the Moneyflow” (need and desire.) Sell out. It also helped to shift the intention of the course, so that participants would actually see results, like a participant in the current Moneyflow course telling me that her practice has between doubled and tripled in the last four months.

2. Allowing More Time Than You Think

Often, it takes more time than one imagines to make a significant decision. For instance, Holly and I have been thinking about signing up for a baby sign-language class since before the boys were born. We finally signed up a week ago, because they were old enough, and because we mused about it for months, years even, while trying to learn from books.

If this is the first time you are launching your course, in many ways it’s actually marketing for next year’s or next season’s course.

We’ve failed to sell out our Path to Profitability Retreat, although we’ve had some very healthy numbers (18+ people the last two years), because of this factor. It just takes a good long while for people to make space in their schedule to come to a five-day retreat.

And, please note, it’s mid-May, and I’m beginning to mention the retreat right now, and it happens in November. And I still think I’m late on the lead time. We’ll see what happens.

3. Repetition in the Campaign

People need to be reminded multiple times–often more times than we’re comfortable with as the business owner. You don’t want to be pushy, so you just mention it once or twice to your readers. You shyly mention it here or there.

Meanwhile, your best clients see it, and say, “Wow, that sounds great. I have to think about that!” And then, no more notices from you. They forget about it only to begin wondering months later, “Did that course ever happen? I really wanted to do that.”

You want to be telling your email list or blog readers, in various ways, 12-15 times over a couple of months at least. It seems like a lot, and it is, but it can be done in ways that aren’t too invasive, and yet still effective.

I once had someone complain to me that I didn’t send out a reminder email. Because I didn’t want to bother people, I didn’t remind folks of the early-bird deadline. “You let me miss the early-bird deadline!” Chagrin.

There are exceptions–you can have built up a huge, rabid following that is ready to leap on what you’re offering as soon as the doors are open. And you’ll notice that the folks who experience that are actually doing the things on this list.

4. Answering All the Questions in the Sales Copy

This often leads to longer sales pages than you might be comfortable writing, but it needs to be complete enough to work. Your followers have all kinds of both obvious and crazy questions about your offer. If you don’t answer them, they don’t feel safe enough, and they don’t sign up.

I was teaching Heart-Centered Copywriting, which I haven’t taught in a few years except within the Moneyflow Course, and we were working on one student’s offer. He told us about a retreat he likes to lead in the desert. I then asked the class, “Okay, what questions do you have?”

All kinds of normal questions popped up, over twenty of them, easily. And then someone asked, “Is it safe?” Huh? “Wild animals? Are there wild animals that will attack me?”

He was dumbfounded. He’s been going to the desert for years, and it’s very safe when you know what to do. He never considered that a potential participant might be afraid of wild animals. He had to answer that fear in his sales copy, along with the other 20+ questions.

Rather than getting caught in the “long” versus “short” copy debate, consider whether it is  complete or incomplete. Does it answer the questions, or doesn’t it?

5. Really Easy Registration Process

Meaning that there is a clear “buy” button and a clear flow through the purchasing process. Don’t make people pick up the phone to register. If someone has a question, give them a web form right on the sales page that they can fill out.

This is where paying for a good shopping cart service is worth the money. They make it easy and smooth.

6. Urgency

There needs to be internal (to the client) urgency, where the person feels an active need and desire for the results your offer produces.

But you also need to help people wake up from the autopilot flying their life. Humans have an almost infinite capacity to tolerate pain and suffering, thank goodness. This is why Zen masters thwack their students with bamboo cane while meditating–to wake them up. My shaykh yells out at 3 a.m. during prayer retreats for the same reason.

External urgency such as an early-bird price, limited quantity, or other defined limits really help people pay attention now and reassess their priorities. It also helps you fill courses. Of course, you don’t need to hit people over the head repeatedly–that leads to hype.

But a little bit of urgency can get folks to wake up and make a decision before they miss the opportunity.

7. Numbers

If you are trying to fill 12 slots in a course, and you only have 100 people to offer it to, then I’m doubting that you’ll fill it, period, no matter how hard you work. A 12% conversion rate is HUGE, and not a fair expectation of yourself or the folks who are listening.

The numbers are important because people have lives. They have other commitments and priorities, they are in various stages of the decision-making process, and timing just isn’t right for many of them.

If your reach is smaller, you will get smaller numbers. That’s okay, you aren’t doing anything wrong. Unless you aren’t trying to expand your reach.

Of course, you need to be reaching people who actually want what you’re selling. Numbers alone won’t do it, which is one reason why our list outperforms, in revenue, the lists of two other people I know whose lists are ten times the size of ours.

But without numbers it ain’t going to happen. A round, no-hard-data-only-anecdotal-evidence-to-support-it observation:, if you want a professional-level income or higher in your business, then you’ll probably need to be reaching, minimum, around 400 to 700 people.

The Checklist

If you hit all of these points, you’ll probably have a decent chance at filling your class. I know each of these points deserves an article if not an entire course, but you can still start to apply these pieces in imperfect but effective ways, and notice what’s happening.

Let me know if you have anything to add to the list, disagreements, or questions.

p.s. The Eighth Necessary Thing

Sometimes the seven necessaries don’t work as well as you think they should. What’s missing? It might be the Eighth Necessary Thing.

What I’m calling the Eighth Necessary Thing is a healthy relationship with money and finances. Are you open to really letting it in? Are you centered enough that you can make an offer without falling into piranha “eat the client because you need the money” mindset?

Underlying all the activities and strategies that make your business work is the heart. When the heart is at peace, everything works more smoothly, insights and wisdom come easily, miracles are noticed instead of ignored.

When your heart is in struggle, everything is harder. And there is nothing like issues with money, provision, and security to put your heart into struggle.

If you’re ready to heal your heart and have a healthy relationship with your finances, please join me.

The Heart of Money Transformational Journey
Begins June 16. Early-bird deadline June 1.