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How to become one of the highest paid people in your industry

August 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

A reader emailed me with a great question. She asked: “What’s the most direct route to becoming one of the best paid service providers in my industry, Jim?” I told her I’d share my answer here, as I know it’s something many of you will find useful.

Sometimes, the best answer to a problem seems too simple to be correct. Too good to be true. Thankfully, when it comes to attracting the very best clients and fees, the simple answer is also the right answer.

Drum roll please…

You attract better clients, better projects and better fees, when you solve better problems.

What do I mean when I say “solve better problems”?

I’m suggesting you deliberately choose to apply your skills (in whatever area of business you’re in) to the most challenging work. I’m talking about the really tricky stuff. The demanding work, which requires more thinking, deeper problem solving and greater effort.

Here’s why this approach is so powerful

Very few service providers deliberately choose to solve the most pressing and valuable problems. The vast majority do what’s expected. In other words, they work hard doing their best possible version of what their marketplace expects from someone in their industry.

If you’re willing to embrace solving better problems, it presents you with a double opportunity.

By seeking out the most challenging work, your fees are not only higher, you also find yourself with very little (often zero) meaningful competition.

Hold on. There’s another benefit.

The providers who focus on solving the best problems aren’t only (by far) the highest paid, with the least competition. They also get to work every single day, on the most interesting and professionally rewarding projects.

Let’s recap. By shunning the middle ground and choosing to solve better problems you get:

The best clients. (Clients who pay the top rates because they value your skills are always the best to work with).
A chance for you to earn the highest fees in your industry or profession.
Far, far less competition. Read this.
The most interesting type of work.
Bigger and better rewards on every level.

Easier said than done?

Yes, of course it is. But that’s precisely why this opportunity exists.

Why people criticise you and how to deal with it in just 3 steps

August 1, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Here is a simple, powerful 3 step process, to help you totally overcome the impact or fear of negative criticism. It will show you why people criticise you and how to deal with it… fast!

Broadly, all of your critics can be divided into 1 of the following 2 groups:

Those who want to help you and encourage you.
Those who want to hinder you and see you fail.

It’s the second type of critic, which I want to talk to you about today. It’s that type of negative criticism, which stops many of us from being willing to stand out. It stops us putting our work or art out there. It encourages us to keep our head down. To follow the crowd.

The power of a critic

If you want your business to stand out, to attract lots of word of mouth referrals, it’s essential that you stop negative criticism from influencing you.

Why?

Because just about everything you need to do in order to market your business successfully, is visible and wide open to criticism. Anything you do, which is different enough for the marketplace to value it, is also visible enough for critics to criticise it.

So, you either learn to deal with it or do what most small business owners do, and run a business in the shadows, which is not a wise marketing move!

3 Steps to deal with negative criticism

Fortunately, dealing with negative criticism is relatively easy, so long as you learn to accept it for what it is. Once you understand why criticism happens, it eliminates its negative impact and allows you to focus all your effort on putting your best work out there.

Because I publish lots of material to a large audience, I get negative criticism regularly. In fact, the better my work, the more likely it is that at least one person will criticise it or criticise me for writing it.

Here are the 3 steps I used, to totally eliminate the negative impact of criticism.

1. Consider their motivation

When someone feels the need to negatively criticise your work, they are satisfying a need they have. It’s always about them, not you or your work.

Even if someone is negatively criticising you because they hope it will help you improve, it’s to satisfy their desire to help.

So, whatever the intention, criticism is always about the critic!

Understanding this is a key part of disempowering the critic’s influence over you and how you feel. When you accept that it’s NOT about you or your work, you see criticism for what it is: a selfish act perpetrated to feed a need the critic has – positive or negative.

Of course, even if the motivation is negative, if they are an expert in the field, you can still learn from what the critic says. Scientists often negatively criticise the work of their peers, people who really know their subject. That kind of criticism may be negative, but it can bring value with it.

This brings us nicely to the second step.

2. Consider the source

Is the person who is negatively criticising you, qualified to criticise you? Most criticism is unqualified. That’s to say, the person criticising your work doesn’t know enough about the subject or what you’re trying to achieve, to offer anything other than an uninformed opinion.

Negative criticism from an unqualified, uninformed source is of so little value that it’s meaningless.

It makes zero sense to pay it any of your valuable attention.

3. Use negative criticism as weights in your mental gym

With each piece of criticism that you run through the previous 2 steps, you build your resistance to the negative impact of critics. Just as lifting weights builds your muscles, processing negative criticism builds your emotional defences. Each time you are criticised and see it for what it really is, it becomes easier. Less daunting. Less fearsome.

Pretty soon, you learn to be fascinated by criticism and what it tells you about the other person. You quickly learn that if no one is criticising you, you are either invisible, doing work that fails to stand out… or both.

In short, don’t try and avoid negative criticism. If you do, it will rob you of your voice. No criticism means no impact! And you deserve to be heard.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

How to get massively better results from your advertising

July 30, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Here are 3 tips to help you get massively better results from your advertising.

Tip 1: Discover the media your customers consume

You need to uncover what your prospective customers read, listen to or watch. This will be easier for some of you than others. If, for example, you sell exclusively to a certain industry, it’s easy to identify the most popular media aimed at that industry. The same is true if you sell to a particular community, such as those interested in cycling, cars, boats, cooking, etc.

For those who sell to a less well defined group, you’ll need to talk with your customers. A simple survey will help. Then look for common threads within the survey answers. For example, they may be interested in a wide spread of things, yet a high percentage may be within a certain age group. This would help you find radio, podcasts, blogs, magazines or TV aimed at them… or at least a useful subset of them.

The more targeted you get your advertising, the better. No matter how great your product, service or offer is, people can’t buy from you if they don’t see your ad.

Tip 2: Learn how your customers consume media

Next, you need to know how your prospective customers consume their media. This will help you reach the right people, correctly.

For example, radio advertising can be very effective if you want to build brand awareness. However, it will be far less effective if you want to get people to take direct action and call you or visit your website. Many radio consumers listen whilst they drive, are at the gym or are in the shower, etc. In each example, they can’t easily write down a phone number, URL or social media handle.

So, you need to make sure you use the correct form of media, for the kind of ad you want to run. If you choose radio or podcasts for advertising, it’s worth investing in an easy to remember phone number and web address.

Tip 3: Do they pay attention to the ads?

Finally, you need to know if people are engaging with the ads.

The Game Informer magazine is read each month by over 7 million people. It’s an American video game publication and it contains lots of advertisements. Here’s the thing: The ads in the magazine actually add to its value. It would be less valuable to the readers if the ads weren’t there. That’s because video game enthusiasts WANT to know about the games, events and hardware being advertised.

Now compare that to websites that pre-run video ads, when you’re trying to read an article. Do these intrusive ads make the site more valuable to the user?

The point I’m making here is that there’s a difference between advertising where people want to hear what you have to say, and advertising where your message is seen as an annoying intrusion.

In closing

Be where your prospective customer’s attention is. If they are paying attention to what you have to say, and your advertisement is well produced, advertising can make you a fortune. So choose wisely.

How to totally avoid fee sensitive clients. Yes, it works in your industry too

July 15, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

You don’t need to sell your services or products based on price. You don’t need to waste your time on fee-sensitive clients or customers, either.

In today’s brief post, I explain why.

Sort by price

One of the most common features on shopping sites, is the “sort by price” filter. It lets us see products in the category we’ve searched for, listed in price order.

The reason sort by price exists, is that the marketplace demands it. When presented with 5 or 50 options for a commodity product, the lowest price wins. This is known as the race to the bottom. Bottled water is bottled water. It makes no sense to pay more for it than you need to.

Bullshit!

But what about Bob?

Bob is passionate about helping people worldwide have access to clean drinking water. He then finds a water brand, which donates money from every bottle sold, to build wells in areas where there’s no clean water.

So, Bob’s happy (very happy) to pay more for his bottled water from this well-building brand. Plus, because people like Bob know lots of other people like Bob, he tells his friends. They do the same. Water gets sold. Wells get built. And people get to make a meaningful difference to the lives of those who need it.

The lesson here?

If you want potential clients or customers to stop caring about your fees, give them something more important to care about. This means differentiating your products or services from the competition.

The good news? If it works for a commodity like water, it can definitely work for you. Regardless of your industry.

How to predict your future clients and attract the very best

July 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’d like to share an idea, to help you build a fantastic commercial future… starting today.

I’ll also show you how I helped one of my clients build the business of her dreams, using this idea.

It begins with a simple 3 word phrase.

Work begets work

You may have heard that work begets work before. However, the phrase is usually used with very little mention of its wider meaning. On a surface level, it’s true to say that by working on something, we’re likely to attract more work. More likely, than if we wait around for the phone to ring. For example, I hired a guy to do some work on my house, after seeing the work he did for one of my friends. His work for my friend led to work from me.

That’s just the surface.

You see there’s a word missing from that 3 word phrase. And it’s what makes all the difference.

Work not only begets work, work begets similar work. In other words, the work we’re doing today, will have a massive influence on the type of work we’re doing tomorrow, the clients we work with tomorrow and the fees we’re earning tomorrow.

In short, if you want to take your business to the next-level (and beyond), you need to start doing next-level work today.

Think about it. The alternative approach is nuts

The alternative is to wait and hope.

Wait for an amazing stranger to see (or hear about) our current-level work.
Then hope they magically decide, with zero evidence, that we’re capable of next-level work.
Oh, then hope that for some insane reason, they’ll also be keen to risk their money hiring us.

Sure, we can wait for opportunity to knock.

Like in the movies.

Or we can get off our ass and build a door.

That’s what Sue did.

How this worked for a former client of mine

Sue (not her real name) is a graphic designer, with a focus on lettering. I worked with her on my work begets similar work idea and she’s never looked back. Previously, Sue struggled, working as a freelance designer for agencies and doing sub-contract work. They said what they wanted. She did it. This was soul destroying. And whilst she was busy, the money was crap. She had very few direct clients. Her work had no signature. And she’d wasted 9 years, going nowhere.

After I shared the work begets similar work idea with her, Sue did a rebrand on her own business, demonstrating the kind of next-level work she’s capable of. We decided to reach out to some environmental charities, who she thought were in need of rebranding. The environment is something Sue’s passionate about.

Anyhow, one of them jumped on board.

Sue then threw 100% of her creativity and passion into the project. The end product was visually stunning. It was very clearly on a totally different level to the soul-destroying work she’d been doing. The charity loved it. More importantly, they used it.

And it was extremely effective.

A while after the charity’s rebrand project, the CMO of a toy company saw it and asked the charity for Sue’s details. He reached out to her and asked if she’d be interested in designing the lettering for their new, environmentally friendly line of garden furniture. That project led to the next. And that project led to the next…

Sue’s next-level work begot similar work. Work she’s passionate about. Work that is massively more emotionally and financially rewarding. She’s now well-established in a niche she loves, working direct with international brands.

Yes, it works in your industry too

What if you provide a service that isn’t as visual as Sue’s?

So long as you have the desire to crank the quality of your work to a higher level than you currently do, you can absolutely show it to your prospective, next-level clients. Blogging, newsletters, podcasts, Youtube and social networks give you all the tools you need, to showcase your next-level approach, thinking and ideas. The enquiries you attract will be from people, who’ll see you’re clearly capable of delivering the level of service (or results) they want.

This is a great time to put your next-level work out there. So, show those high quality clients you’d love to work with, just what you’re capable of.

How to avoid arguments and enjoy great client relationships

June 28, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I witnessed an argument yesterday, between a business owner and one of his customers. It was noisy, public and has lost the business owner at least one customer. The whole situation could have been avoided, with the tip I’m going to share with you in today’s post. Here’s what happened, along with a valuable business lesson.

First, here’s a quote from the 1936 classic, How to win friends and influence people.

The book’s author, Dale Carnegie, said; “Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, you’re wrong! to them.”

You are right. They are right too. Maybe!

When someone disagrees with us, it’s easy to think that they are wrong. This is especially the case when we truly believe that our opinion is right.

Here’s the thing: It’s entirely possible that their opinion and our opinion are both correct, even when we see things very differently.

For example:

I really dislike the taste of almonds. In my opinion and in my experience, almonds taste disgusting.
You may love the taste of almonds. In your opinion, they taste absolutely delicious.
If we went through a lie detector test, we would both be proven to be telling the truth — even though our answers were 100% different.

That’s the thing about opinions. When an opinion is given as an answer, it’s usually one of dozens, maybe hundreds, of possible correct answers.

How one retailer got it very wrong

I was prompted to write this post, after listening to a business owner arguing with one of his customers. The argument took place yesterday in a cycle shop.

Here’s what happened.

The customer asked if the retailer stocked a particular brand of tyre. The retailer asked why the customer wanted that brand. The customer explained that in his experience, it was the best on the market. The retailer then insisted the customer was wrong. He even went so far as to get his iPad out and show some negative Amazon.com reviews of the tyre.

Incidentally, I would have picked a different brand of tyre than either of those picked by the customer or the shop owner. That’s because depending on our experience with different brands of tyre, we will have formed different opinions.

Anyhow, the customer walked out of the shop, shaking his head in frustration. After the confrontational stance the retailer took, and his raised voice, I doubt the customer will ever return — especially as he now knows he can get the tyre he wants, for less, on Amazon!

The retailer had a smug grin on his face, assuming he’d won the argument. What he’d actually done, was lose a customer by showing zero respect for the customer’s opinion and turning a sales enquiry into a heated argument. I’m not sure any business owner can sustain too many victories like that.

Turning a difference of opinion into a valuable opportunity

We don’t have to agree with everyone. What we should do, however, is learn to respect their right to their opinion.

Indeed, we can use our difference of opinion as a way to create a useful dialogue. We can even use it to deepen our relationship with customers, clients or contacts.

For example, here’s an effective way to handle a business situation, when your opinion is different from the other person.

Explain that all you’re interested in, is finding the best solution for them. This places both of you on the same side. The difference this makes to the tone of the conversation is huge.
Give the other person the opportunity to say what they want to say, without butting in. By allowing them to get their point across, they will feel less tense and feel more positively toward you, for showing them respect and recognition.
If you believe they’re incorrect or about to make a mistake, you should offer them another perspective. Note: You’re not arguing with them. You’re offering them your perspective based on your experience and expertise.
Then, offer an example of how your suggested approach has worked in the past, for people with similar challenges. This is massively more effective than looking for holes in their position and bombarding them with reasons why they’re wrong.
Ask them what they think and listen again without butting in.
Because there’s no confrontation, no argument to be won or lost, the other person is free to consider your opinion. They can now agree with you, without losing face.

Does this approach magically win around everyone, whose opinion is different from yours? No.

However, I’ve used this approach since starting my business in 1995 with huge success. It has gained me many clients and many good friends too. Equally, it has never lost me a client — unlike the kind of confrontational approach, used by the store owner in my example.

Interestingly, I’ve always found this approach to be massively more effective at helping others see things my way, than attacking their opinion.

Respect never gets old

The technologies we use today are very different from those, which were used when Carnegie wrote that amazing book. However, business is still all about people. Showing respect for others and their opinions, is just as important today as it was in 1936.