Delving deeper

When I first declared women-owned insurance agencies as my target market, I didn't know very much about them or the industry. So, I've started doing research and educating myself by interviewing women in this group. I've begun to identify some of their major challenges and have even uncovered a potential opportunity for a product offering. If it turns out that this is as big as it seems, it could mean a fundamental shift in my business model which I eagerly anticipate.

Management Mastery Academy Braintrust lecture series

Well, I've launched Management Mastery Club Academy with expert calls from a variety of disciplines. The first one was last week and focused on non-traditional sales strategies.

The next few will be on tax strategies of the rich and famous, strategic business development and using legal business entity formation to capitilize on tax law.

I'm excited about working with these talented people and they are excited about teaching my clients their secrets!

Stay tuned...

Technology Recovery

I am notorius for saving emails and I'm on a lot of email distribution lists. I have signed up with a variety of online marketers so I can study and emulate their strategies. It leaves my email in-basket however, quite full.

To make matters even worse, I don't spend a lot of time cleaning out my inbasket. I read and respond to the notices I need to, then just ignore the rest. This results in a complete overload...and crash... of my email client last Saturday.

Fortunately, I subscribe to a fabulous service, www.MyComputerWorks.com. The technicians there can access your computer remotely (with your permission and oversight of course) and fix any number of issues. This past weekend, a team of them repaired, recovered, re-established all of my email accounts. I didn't get everything back (that would have crashed it again anyway), but the BEST news is that, I didn't have to spend hours (or more likely days) working on my own, trying to figure out what to do.

They did all of the work for me!

It took literally hours (probably about 10 when it was all said and done). But it wasn't 10 MY hours. It was 10 of THEIRS! Talk about leverage and good use of outsourcing.

I love those guys! They have saved me a fortune.

Joint Ventures

I've had a couple of conversations with colleagues about creating products (teleclasses mostly) that we conduct together and promote to the people who subscribe to my newsletter. I see this as a great way to create value for my clients and to increase visibility and credibility for both me and the people with whom I partner.

The first class will be on Halloween, October 31 and it's called "Break the Rules and Make More Sales". I'm really looking forward to it. We'll be offering at least one new class every month. Look for upcoming announcements about these great events.

Referral partners

I'm attending a magnificent course on business building that centers on networking and referrals. The techniques are amazing and I'm right now somewhat overloaded with possibilities for expansion. I can see that I need to outsource some of the activities that consume my time so I can focus on more high leverage opportunities - like building relationships with a referral network.

I also know that I must begin interacting more directly with people live and face-to-face. I love technology, but recognize that I sometimes hide behind email and web-based marketing. I get such positive feedback from live events I conduct that it's time to start doing more of them.

This week I'll be identifying and contacting people with whom I can partner for events and people to whom I can delegate some of my work.

Here we go! On to bigger horizons and playing fields!

Amazing results

Having defined a target market (women insurance agent/owners with staff]), I met with my first prospect in that market. In my meeting with her, I learned a lot abot her business and the challenges she faces. As we spoke, it became apparent that there were a number of things we could do profitably together and I am happy to report that she is now a client!

I'm really looking forward to working with her and her team. I'm sure I'll learn more about the industry as we work together and will be able to extend my 'offer' to her to her colleagues in the insurance market.

Distractions

Yesterday, it seems my day was consumed with distractions and little nuisances that took an hour to resolve. I switched the telephone/cable/internet bill from my husband's name to mine and had to reconfigure all 3 of my email accounts. I spent nearly an hour with a tech support person trying to figure out why one of them was still not receiving messages sent from the other two.

I spent over an hour on the phone with techsupport at my shopping cart provider and then with my webmaster assessing what might have happened with the notices I was supposed to receive notifying me of people who had signed up for a teleclass I scheduled. I had only gotten one notice and postponed the class only to find out a few minutes after start time that 21 people had signed up and many of them were on the call waiting for me! Yikes! Lesson learned. Don't rely on autoresponder notices...check the cart for sign-ups before cancelling a class.

It was a tough day. At the end of the day, I looked back on where my time had gone. I was convinced that it has become time to hire someone else, yet given the nature of the things that consumed the time, it seemed like what was needed was my own tech support staff. Here's the bad news. I want to understand the tech portions of my business and I'm afraid of letting some part of the technology side go. Now, this sounds like what my coaching clients tell me when they are facing the big delegation decision. So I'm going to reassess where I spend my time and come up with a plan for how to get some of these time-consuming annoyances off of my plate.

I realize that I can't scale to the size I want to become if I keep all these 'goodies' to myself. Time for a reinvention. Stay tuned!