Achieve Your Highest Aspirations
Use the audio player below to listen this teleseminar Lisa delivered for the Coach U community.
Use the button below to download the handout “How to Craft a Speech that is a Work of Art”
I learned the hard way. When I first started my coaching practice I thought of lots of really cool ideas for my business…and did them! I picked folks up from the train from Manhattan and took them to the beach to coach! I heated my pool to ninety two degrees and they got 30 minutes alone (naked) in my back yard on my pool float and then a shower and frozen drink with a paper Chinese umbrella in it! Then I had groups of women in my home who got Greek salad and group coaching for $15 for a three hour evening! Wow! I had lots of happy clients!
I had my own coach who questioned me about my ROI. What? ROI? What was that? Return on investment…Oh!
I jokingly explained I had sort of a ‘non-profit’. He said “Lisa, even non-profits make money”. “Well, I had created a non-profitable non-profit!” I retorted.
It wasn’t that funny. I could not afford the cool things I thought up. In fact I was losing money, and I was losing precious time I needed to raise and educate my three homeschooling children.
I had a vision and a better way to serve my clients and I thought I would follow the philosophy “Do what you love and the money will follow” and it would all work out. Need I say, it did not?
I did get one of those ‘learning experiences” we are supposed to take comfort in. What did I learn? “Do what you loveto increase revenue and the money will follow.”
Cool!
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What’s the one thing you need to know about selling, networking and… dating?
Let’s start with dating. When a man wants a woman to go out with him what does he do? He flatters her (telling her he likes her smile or that she’s the prettiest woman in the room). He asks her a question about herself and listens attentively as she talks about herself, looking into her eyes (he shows he is interested in her). He says something personal and funny and entertains her (the shortest line between two people is a laugh). He tells her something about the good things he has that she might benefit from (he dangles a carrot like his condo on the beach).He tells her a story (he let’s her know a little bit about who he is or what he thinks in a way that’s dramatic). He offers to take her somewhere she wants to go (he picked up on it in the conversation-he was looking for an ‘in’). He asks for her phone number (he’s lettings her know he would enjoy her company in the future). And he calls her …quickly! (He wants her to know he’s excited about her).
In short, he makes her feel very good about herself.
What does a woman do when she wants to move forward? She looks at the man and smiles a lot (affirming she is interested), she laughs a lot (affirming he is witty) she agrees a lot (affirming he is brilliant) she asks questions and listens attentively (affirming he is fascinating) and she listens as he talks about himself. (Signaling she is enjoying his company).
In short, she makes him feel very good about himself.
We call this flirting. Change the words and call it selling or networking.
Here’s the magic secret: Make people feel very good about themselves!
If you make people feel very good about themselves they’ll do business with you (and keep on coming back for more)! Forgotten how to flirt? Here’s how you do it (in business):
Deliver on your promises (And don’t stop doing the little things you did in the beginning; keep the flowers chocolate and champagne going!)… and the romance will last!
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Do you lay in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about the people at your workplace who seem to get by (very well) either by doing absolutely nothing or (worse yet) by preventing everybody else from getting anything done?
There is a solution. (No, not drugs.) You just need to do a little creative visualization.
Imagine you are a housekeeper in an exquisite and wonderful twenty-one room home. The owner is an eccentric old woman who adores her twenty-one pink poodles, and each one has its own room. The dogs chew the furniture, shed, mess up the bed, beg for attention and treats, romp, bark and generally keep you from getting or keeping any of the rooms clean.
Now, basically the poodles are harmless, though somewhat spoiled. And despite your best efforts, you cannot train or restrain them or get their poodles’ happy owner to give them up or relocate them.
What to do? Should you work around them? Kill them? Quit?
You leave the house in despair and start peeking in the neighbors’ homes, and lo and behold-there are poodles there too! In fact, you discover every room everywhere has a pink poodle! Some are big, some small, some are nasty, some are playful…
You think you are having a hallucination, and you ask your friends; they report poodles. You wander into the office of a therapist. He confirms it’s not you and explains that they cause havoc in everyone’s lives.
What to do?
You go home.
You look in the mirror. Ah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There’s a poodle there, and it is you!
All of us are a difficult person for someone else.
If you value getting things done more than you value people, the world will be full of obstructionists.
But If you value the well-being of people first with a little pat on the head…, you will find furry friends everywhere.
We are never going to get things perfect anyway…, so why let the poodles get us down?
More importantly, don’t all the religions in the world teach that our “negative” experiences occur so we can develop patience and compassion (they can’t all be wrong)?
In other words, the poodles have a divine purpose!
Having a hard day?
Think pink poodles!
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Once a month my husband got really grouchy. He had BPS (Bill Paying Syndrome). He would sit at the dining room table with bills and envelopes spread all around and call out to me in a voice tinged with suspicion, asking things like “What did you charge on July 16th for 1,475 dollars?” to which I would say “How would I know?” Then I’d get busy at the other end of our apartment, meeting the needs of our children until the bill paying time was finished.
One day, I decided I had enough of this type of hostile interrogation and told him bill paying was his department and never to ask me another question about a bill again. I was homeschooling our three children, math gave me a headache, and I had no time to waste on stuff that didn’t concern me. Money was not my department. Victory! That was the last of his annoying behavior.
Seven years later, he casually mentioned to me that we had a $40,000 credit card debt. What! How could that be? I asked him how that happened and why on earth he never told me! I had never been in debt in my life! Shocking! How could he be so irresponsible? “Well,” he said “you told me not to bother you with the bills…so I didn’t.”
Wow! He was right! I walked away in silence. Hmm, how to get 40K immediately? Work was out. I was a homeschooling mom.
What to do? I thought about it hard for three nights. Then at 2am, I’m excited!
“Wake up!”
“What is it?”
“I know what we need to do about the money, you know, our credit card debt.”
“What?”
“We have to buy a house. We need a mortgage, not a debt.”
“You are completely crazy.”
I will not be dissuaded by his limited thinking. I call my parents. They are shocked, too, and tell me I am irresponsible and they won’t give me a penny for a house or anything else.
Next, I call a real estate broker and start looking at houses. My family tells me that I am insane and they will not participate in my delusions. I can’t believe how much houses cost. I keep looking and find some bargains. My husband and parents must take a peek. That’s their Achilles heel, and now I’ve got them! Now I am enticing them to look at amazing bargains with regularity as I say ”We could put my books here,” and they don’t argue. I drag them around like this for two years. I also learn they can’t resist homes with charm (new word: “home” not “house”).
Then I put my apartment on the market after writing an outrageous blurb. I call my “home” a duplex although one half is in the basement. I had bought my apartment for $60K (borrowed the $4K down payment from parents before they learned I was deranged and that’s all I’d paid). Broker says I will be lucky to get $90K. I ask $250K (this is New York in 1999), and I have a buyer for $235K! I sell!
I buy a home dripping with charm. It even has a fish pond! My parents offer me money as a gift. (Why now that I don’t need it?) I pay off my credit card debt, leave my semi-basement and have… a mortgage!
Why I am telling you this story?
Well, once upon a time, I didn’t think money was my business. I had no intention of stopping brownie baking to look into a check book. Not only that, it seemed to me that there were quite enough people who were good at math, so I figured why not let them take care of all boring stuff they loved – I’d be doing them a favor by not interfering!
I don’t know what would have happened to my happy little family if I didn’t learn a little about our finances and commit to improving them.
None of us can afford to ignore our financial well being. Survival is everyone’s first order of business.
Have a money problem?
Get rid of it! Here’s how:
1. Don’t let it define you. I was never poor – I was a rich person without money. Rich and poor are states of mind. My husband tried to tell me I spent too much. I did not! I explained. I was spending just the right amount for the wife of a rich man. He earned too little. Most of the richest people I know owe more money than I ever had. So you might say owing money is a sign of wealth! Once you have your “magic number” talk about it (when necessary) like it’s no problem. Like “Oh, I just owe a mere million or two.” That will relax you.
2. Identify your “opportunity” (that’s what problems are called in the self-help books you probably have a stack of by now). Discover precisely what you have (or have not). If it’s really atrocious, it will make a good story, an inspiring speech, the foundation of your novel…or a blog! And if you get divorced over it (or are already single), it will frighten off unwanted suitors or gold diggers.
3. Commit yourself to having or doing what you’ve always dreamed of, but were too successful to pursue. As Janis Joplin sings, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”! Now’s your chance! Go for your goal… and give your story a happy ending.
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Lisa Yakobi 