Sarah Lakhani

Can you learn to love sales?

January 5, 2022 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Ah, sales. You can’t have a business without it and yet, many business owners despise it. What type of person are you when it comes to selling and – perhaps even more importantly – how can you learn to love sales?

Sales is a fundamental activity for your business success

First, we have to acknowledge that sales is an incredibly important activity in any business. Without it, you literally don’t have a business. As many people have said before me, if you’re not making sales in your business, you’ve got an expensive hobby. In order to have a business, you need revenue coming into it – and without sales, that just won’t happen. Sure, you might have some word-of-mouth and referral traffic, but even then, particularly when it comes to services, there is still a good chance you’ll have to get on a call to pitch your services and close the sale. And, something to be aware of is that referral traffic may dry up eventually, so you always want to be able to generate your own sales so that you’re not dependent on an outside source for it.

So… what do you do if you’re not the amazing salesperson you want to be?

Let’s look at the three types of salespeople that exist

Type #1: The Believer

This type of salesperson loves to sell because they believe in their product/service and they want to serve as many people as possible

Type #2: The Anti-Salesman

This type of salesperson hates to sell because they’re repulsed by the idea of being salesy

Type #3: The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson

This type of salesperson wants to sell their products/services to whoever will listen, no matter whether they’re a good fit or not

What type of salesperson is The Believer?

If you happen to be a Believer, then hats off to you, keep doing what you’re doing. The reason why the Believer sells so easily is because of their perspective on why they’re selling. They focus on serving rather than selling. They understand that when someone purchases their product or service, they receive something that they have been wanting or needing. If you like to think of things in terms of push and pull, they don’t push their products to their customers, they allow their products to be pulled by their customers. This is easier said than done, but we’ll get into some key principles in just a little bit. But before that…

What type of salesperson is The Anti-Salesman?

If you relate to this type of salesperson, you definitely feel resistance to selling, and most likely equate selling to being “salesy”. You don’t see a middle ground, and likely just put your offer out there and tell yourself that if someone wants it, they’ll buy it. But the issue with this perspective is that very often, we intend to purchase something but we get distracted, or we need to feel better about the purchase, or we have questions that haven’t been answered, or a whole host of other reasons that get in the way.

What type of salesperson is The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson?

You hopefully don’t really relate to this type of salesperson, but it’s likely that you are repulsed by the idea that you could be perceived as this type of salesperson. If this sounds like you, then you’re The Anti-Salesman above, but let’s explore this type of salesperson, too, and dive into the persona of the salesperson you don’t want to become. The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson is on a mission to sell their product or service to anyone. This is the pushy salesperson with the morally questionable tactics. You shouldn’t want to be this type of salesperson. And the good news is that you don’t have to be! You can conduct sales activities without becoming a Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson.

The question, therefore, is: how can you feel good about selling?

That is, essentially how you’ll learn to love sales, right?

Remind yourself that you’re not taking anything away from your customers. You’re not forcing anyone to buy. You are simply offering your product or service – which they have decided they want – in exchange for money. Break it down like this and you’ll soon start seeing this as the fair exchange that it is.
Have a way to gauge interest and ask those who’re interested to “raise their hand”. You don’t want to be The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson, so make sure that whoever you’re selling to is genuinely interested. There are so many ways to do this: you can host a free event (on a topic that relates to your product/service) and ask people to sign up, you can invite people to a discovery call (if you’re a service provider), you can sell via your own channels (social media and email) giving those who aren’t interested the opportunity to unfollow or unsubscribe or you can open up a waitlist or pre-sale as part of a campaign. There are probably plenty of other ideas too, but these are some to get your creative juices started.
Learn more about peoples’ buying habits. More often than not, we need to be reminded of something several times before we actually hit the purchase button. This is true even of things we already know we’re going to buy. It’s not about convincing someone to purchase. It’s about providing them with multiple opportunities to make the purchase. Study your own purchasing behaviors – and those of the people around you. And then remind yourself of these behaviors when the time comes to sell.
Understand – deeply – how your product or service benefits your customer. If you understand this, you’ll be able to explain clearly, concisely and with conviction, why someone should purchase your product or service. And this changes the conversation from being a situation in which you feel like you’re trying to sell something to someone to a situation in which you’re able to demonstrate empathy and provide a solution to someone. It’s a very different energy.
Lastly, build a relationship before selling. Create marketing content that speaks to your ideal customers. Connect with them via comments and DMs on social media. Set up free events that they can attend to become better acquainted with your products and services. Have a website and social media accounts that provide the information your ideal customers are looking for. Selling in the 5th or 10th encounter with your target customer is much easier than selling in your 1st or 2nd encounter. Create a community or a customer journey that your ideal customer goes through before you ask for the sale.

Learn to love sales: The Conclusion

Essentially, everyone can learn to love sales. I truly believe that. It’s a skill and a change in mindset, and if you’re not there yet, follow the 5 steps above and you’ll see a shift in your sales. After all, you have something to share with the world, and the more people you get it to, the bigger the impact you’ll make. This is about more than just you and the discomfort you currently feel about selling. It’s about serving and creating an impact in the world.

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Reframing Questions to Drive Success

December 8, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

At a young age, we learned about the power of questions – unknowingly, perhaps, but the seeds were planted. Who? What? Why? When? Where? And… How? When you think about where you are now, where you want to be and what you need to get you there, reframing questions opens up your mind to ideas and possibilities that would otherwise be dormant, driving your chance for success up.

In this article, I’m going to share several critical question to ask yourself as you work towards your goals. And in addition to that, I’m also going to share some ideas on how to structure your questions moving forward, so you are constantly expanding your thinking and developing new ideas. Sound good? Let’s get started!

The questions you ask yourself today

Typically, we tend to ask ourselves the same questions over and over again. People unhappy at work will ask themselves, “When will be life be different?”, “What do I need to get through the day?”, “How many days until the weekend/holidays?”. Entrepreneurs getting their businesses off the ground will ask themselves, “When will I start making money?”, “Why can’t I attract more customers?”, “When will I be where I want to be?”. Take a minute and think about the questions you ask yourself every day. If you’re ready to make changes, you can even write them down on a piece of paper or type them into a new document.

The trouble with the questions we ask ourselves, are twofold. One, they usually place more emphasis on the outside world than on things we can control ourselves. And two, they’re the same questions, so logically, we’re going to keep coming up with the same answers. And so, we have the same questions, same answers, and not much we can do about them. That’s not a great place to be.

Tip #1: Flipping the distribution of power through your questions

So let’s first look at flipping the questions around so that they’re more empowering. Instead of wondering when things will happen to or for us – a change in environment, an increase in leads, a more supportive peer groups, etc. – let’s change the questions so that they put you in the driver’s seat.

“When will life be different?” becomes “What can I do to bring more joy into my life?”
“When will I start making money?” becomes “When can I launch my service?”
“Why can’t I attract more customers?” becomes “How can I attract more customers?”

And so on.

This one little change in your questions will open up your mind to plenty of new ideas. Why? Because our brains love to solve problems. But when you ask yourself “When will life be different?”, your brain comes back with “When I’m not stressed out/When I have more money/When I have more clients.” etc. It’s a dead end, and the ball is in the outside world’s court. But now ask “What would make me enjoy my life more?” or “ What can I do to reduce stress in my life/make more money/attract more clients?” and you’ll get completely different answers which put the ball back in your court, empower you and open up your mind to new ideas.

Tip #2: Increasing the quality of ideas generated through reframing your questions

Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, by asking different questions, your brain will look for different answers. So if you’re currently asking a lot of “why” questions, try changing them to “how” questions. If you’re asking mostly “when” questions, change them to “what” questions. There is no secret formula – just ask different questions by exploring the many types of questions you can ask.

For example, “Why am I not attracting the right clients to my business?” can become any of the following questions:

“What can I do differently to attract the right clients?”
“How can I attract the right clients?”
“How do my competitors attract their clients?”
“Who are the right clients for my business?”
“Who can help me attract the right clients for my business?”
“Where are the clients that I would like to attract to my business?”

As you can see above, there are plenty of different questions you can ask yourself about the same topic. And depending on what you ask and how you ask it, you’ll get different answers, and ideas. This is key because it changes the pattern you have formed in your mind and it introduces new things to explore, which in turn will introduce even more new things to explore.

A complete revamp to demonstrate the impact of reframing questions

So let’s take one scenario and see how asking different questions produces a different outcome.

The question we’ll start off with is: “Why isn’t my audience engaging with me on social media?” This is something a lot of small business owners struggle with, so I hope it’s an example that not only demonstrates the power of questions but also provides you with immediate questions to start asking yourself.

I would imagine, having been in this place before, that the response to this question that plays in your mind is something along the lines of poor content, the wrong audience and a topic that doesn’t resonate with your audience.

Now let’s ask a few new questions and see what happens.

“What can I do to encourage my audience to engage with me on social media?”
“When can I expect my audience to engage with me on social media?”
“How can I encourage my audience to engage with me on social media?”
“Where can I place calls to action to encourage my audience to engage with me on social media?”

With these three new questions alone, you can expect to develop ideas around:

content that would be interesting to your audience
calls to action to use
placement of calls to action
checking insights to find the best times for audience engagement
creating simple prompts to encourage engagement

None of these were responses to the original question, “Why isn’t my audience engaging with me on social media?”. And so, as can be seen through this example, asking different questions, and hopefully better questions, leads to new ideas that help shift you out of your current situation and towards your goals.

The key takeaway

We often ask ourselves the same questions every day, particularly around things we struggle with. To move out of your current situation, you need to prompt new ideas through new ways of thinking about the situation. This is accomplished through reframing your questions. Two ways to do this: flip your question to give you the power and ask different questions about the same thing so you can view the problem from different angles. Questions are extremely powerful and will give rise to plenty of incredible ideas, as long as you use them in the right way.

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The 3 Business Success Factors

November 10, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

I love strategy just as much as the next management consultant, but as a business owner, I’ve got to say, there are 3 business success factors, and strategy is just one of them. The other two are action and mindset. And more than ever, when you’re starting/running your own business, you’ll notice the (negative) effects when you’re focused on only one or two of these areas. They may not all need equal amounts of your time, but they do all need your attention.

Why these three factors?

How did we get here? What makes these three things the areas that everything else falls into? Well… it’s quite simple really:

Strategy keeps you moving in the right direction.

Mindset ensures you’re removing your own blocks and moving forward in a way that feels good.

And action keeps you moving.

Lack of Strategy

Most of my clients come to me for strategy. And that’s totally understandable. Strategy is deciding where you want to be, how you want to position yourself and mapping out a roadmap to get there. It covers your overall business strategy, brand strategy and all the pieces that fit into them, such as your marketing strategy, your sales strategy and your customer strategy.

When you have a gap in this particular business success factor, you’ll find that you’re either lost, not taking any steps forward because you just don’t know what to do or you’ll find yourself jumping from one strategy to another. You’ll likely also be listening to multiple people, maybe multiple mentors or business coaches, and consuming all their free content. Piecing all this free content together to form a strategy is near impossible. Why? Because each piece is part of a different strategy.

Instead, what you need to do if this sounds like the situation you’re in is to commit to one strategy. One way of making money, of selling, of marketing, of moving people through your customer journey. Define that one way and then map out how you’re going to get there. Commit to that. And stop listening to and being swayed by other strategies. The truth is, many strategies will work. The trick is to find the one that suits you and your strengths the most.

Lack of Action

It goes without saying that not taking action is going to result in not getting anywhere, right? Logically, this makes sense. But many of us (myself included, once upon a time!) love the strategy and mindset elements and just end up spending most of our time there. Action is moving your business along the roadmap that you’ve created from your strategy work. It’s moving the needle every day, taking action, implementing a part of your strategy.

When you have a gap in this business success factor, you’ll notice that you have lots of great ideas, an incredibly well defined strategy, but nothing that others can see. It’s all virtual, or in documents, but nothing has been implemented. To be honest, I’ve seen a lot of strategy work end without any action being taken. And the truth is, no amount of strategy work is going to helpful if you don’t take the required action.

So if you find that you’re the type of business owner who loves to spend time in strategy mode and not enough time implementing, here are my three recommendations:

Take small action. Any action is better than no action. So break things down into bite-sized chunks and do a small bit every day.
Reward yourself for completing your action. Save that piece of chocolate until after you’ve completed your task.
Remind yourself how far you’ve come and put things into perspective. It wasn’t as difficult as you imagined it would be, right? And the benefits of taking action far outweigh the benefits of not taking action. Read that again if you need to.

Lack of Mindset

Ah, mindset. The one thing no one thinks they need until they realize they need it. Personally, I try to impact mindset through sharing my positivity, my energy and my way of thinking with my clients. But that’s not enough. Mindset includes figuring out why you are resisting certain things that you know you should be doing, and then working through those reasons.

When you have a mindset block, you’ll most likely be living out one (or a few) limiting beliefs. Perhaps you don’t believe you’re ready to take action. Or you don’t think you deserve to make money. Or you think sales is icky. These beliefs then drive your subconscious and you’ll live them out without realizing it. You’ll give a less-than-stellar strategy call or pitch. You’ll be too busy to do any marketing. Or you’ll spend minimal amount of time, if at all, “selling”.

Watch out for your thoughts. What do you tell yourself frequently? “I am terrible at marketing”? “I don’t want to be that type of sales person”? “Sure, she’s making $50k a month, but I could never”? Your thoughts drive your beliefs which drive your actions. If you think you can’t, if you think you shouldn’t, if you think you don’t deserve it, etc, you won’t do it or get it. You might not realize it, or see it happening, but your thoughts literally drive everything you do – in life and in business.

Now you know the 3 business success factors. What’s next?

Now that you know what the 3 business success factors are, I challenge you to take the time to really watch yourself. Find out where you’re falling short. And then use the tips above to fill in that gap. When you do, you’ll see the changes start to unfold right in front of your eyes. These 3 factors literally drive the success of your business. You’ve got this!

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Change is hard: How to make it easier

October 27, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and I’ll definitely keep saying it: Change is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it ALL. THE. TIME. But they’re not, and the reason for that is because creating a change in your life or in your business requires alignment and action on multiple levels. Yes, I’m talking strategy + action + mindset.

Strategy

Of course, when it comes to creating change in your business, your strategy is essential. You absolutely need to know what you’re going to change and how you’ll go about doing it. In fact, most change efforts focus primarily on this one area. And that’s why they usually fail. Because focusing just on strategy doesn’t help you implement and stick with the change. For that, you need mindset and action.

But, before we move onto mindset and action, let’s examine the importance of strategy. Strategy work results in making a decision on where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there. It creates clarity around your vision and the pathway to get you there. Strategy is a very essential component of change. It’s just not the only component.

Action

Having decided where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there, you’ll now need to take action on those initiatives or steps. This is where the resistance starts to come up. When you’re working on your strategy, everything is still theoretical, so it’s a lot easier to accept and move through. But when you start creating the change, that’s when your subconscious kicks in to “protect” you.

Your brain is designed to keep you safe. If it senses danger, it will initiate thoughts and actions that it considers to be “for your safety”. Of course, these things are not necessarily what we would consciously consider to be things to be kept safe from, but since they are new – and with new territory comes an element of the unknown, which then leads to the possibility of danger – your brain believes otherwise.

Mindset

Supporting all your strategy and action initiatives is your mindset. This is where your efforts are either amplified or chopped down. Going through the motions without necessarily being 100% in will not get you the results you’re hoping for.

Your mindset supports you in carrying out your actions from your strategy in a way that produces results. This can be frequency, it can be ideas, it can be the language you use, the energy you bring to conversations. Mindset can literally affect anything and everything. So getting this right is also key.

5 steps to make change happen

Now that you know how the three business elements – strategy, action and mindset – affect your ability to create that change you’ve been wanting, let’s look at the 5 steps to make it happen.

Understand the reason for change

Before embarking on any change at any level, you need to prep yourself and your mind with why this change is needed. Look at the parts of your life or your business that are not making you feel good. Really feel the pain that it’s causing you. And then think about what you’d like to have in the future and create that picture in your mind. Feel what you’d be feeling if that were true for you right now.

And then write it all down. Write down all your reasons why you need to create this change in your life or in your business. Ideally, put this list somewhere you can easily access every day so you can read it and remind yourself why you need to do the things you’ve got planned out.

Find the right support system

Never underestimate the power of being supported. When I talk about support, I like to categorize it into two buckets – the support that comes from family and friends and the support that comes from peers. The former is great in giving you the space (and if you like to use the word, the permission) to create the change you seek. The latter, however, is the one that gives you the perspective and the stories of their experience.

When creating change in your life, having someone who has been through, is going through or has helped other people through the same change is invaluable. It’s like having your own personal guide or team of guides. The right support system can help you figure out what path to take, how to overcome obstacles, what issues to look out for and what to do when you’re ready to give up.

Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)

So by this point you’ve got your reason for change and you have a support system. Next, you’ll have to create your vision. You will have certainly started this process when you were understanding your reason for change, but now is the time to work out all the details. What exactly is this future you want to create? How will you get there? What are all the steps and actions you need to plan and work through?

The key here is clarity. The more clear the vision, the more likely you’ll be to get there. This is especially true if you have a team. Can each person on your team articulate the vision? And when they do, are they all saying the same thing?

Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes

To ensure that your mind and body feel safe (because, don’t forget that change is something your brain categorizes as a potential threat), create small wins at first. These are the little things that push you a little, but still produce a desired outcome that nudges you a little closer to your end goal.

After a few small wins, start working on some larger tasks. You might find that you face some internal resistance. If you do, it’s time to work through it. There are many things you can do here. My favorite is journalling. Write down everything you’ve accomplished so far, then move onto the things that are causing you to feel worried, or feel difficult. As you list these down, look for evidence that disproves each one of them. You can wrap up with some affirmations or future pacing (where you write about the future scenario in the present tense).

Celebrate your wins

Celebrate every single win, no matter how small! In fact, I like to tell my clients to celebrate everything at every stage. For example, if you were on a sales call and the person you were talking to said they wanted to sign up for your program, celebrate! And then when the payment comes through, celebrate again!

The energy around celebrating is one of pure gratitude. And we all know gratitude is so incredibly important. It cultivates the energy and the frequency within you to create more gratitude through more wins and more of the actions that got you there in the first place. So celebrate as much as you can!

Final words on creating lasting change

In short, any change requires you to create the right strategy, take the right actions and have the right mindset to support it all. These three things are embedded across the five steps that I’ve found to work in creating any change in your life and in your business:

Understand the reason for change.
Find the right support system
Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)
Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes
Celebrate your wins

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Decision Making: Your Greatest Asset

September 22, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Decision making is one of the hardest things that you, as a business owner and founder will have to do. Hands down. Why? Because it always feels so permanent. In this article, I’m going to cover three types of decisions: (1) Your overall business proposition (2) Your business direction and (3) Your mindset.

Why Decisions Matter

Before we explore the three types of decisions, let’s take a moment to examine why this is an important topic. Whether you’re in corporate or running your own business, whether you’re a small, medium, large or global business, the same reason applies. Trying to move a business forward without being able to make decisions is highly unlikely to happen. Basically, you just can’t move forward if you’re unable to make decisions.

If you think about places you’ve worked at where your boss, manager or the president of the company were unable to make decisions, I’m sure you’ll find that the people within the teams reporting into them were always confused about what the right thing to do was, always doing something then changing course, and always busy working but producing a low result for the business. And here’s the thing – it’s not the team’s fault. Unless everyone knows what they’re meant to be working towards, it’s just always going to be this way. Sometimes, the results can still be great – because of luck. But most of the time, they just won’t be.

The Impact of Decisions

So now what about the decisions you need to make (and could be struggling with) in your business? How do they affect your business? Whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team, not making the decisions you need to make will invariably slow you down by either stopping work from progressing or progressing it in multiple directions. If you don’t have a team, this could manifest as doing and re-doing work such as changing your business purpose, your target audience or your services. It could also result in changing your priorities every time you think you’ve made that decision, and therefore impacting the activities you’re currently focused on. Eventually, this will lead to burnout and more than that – to that undesirable feeling of failure. And if you have a team and are unable to make business decisions to guide them, you will cause them to spend their time in ways that won’t result in the ROI you need to make their hire a good investment. But it wouldn’t be their fault!

How to make decisions

Decision making is a difficult skill. It’s scary. It feels permanent. It feels like all eyes are on you, and any error in your decision will make you as the leader look bad. But actually, none of that is true. The first thing to know about making decisions is that any decision is better than no decision. So even if you do make a decision that doesn’t produce the outcome you want, it’s still better than not having made that decision in the first place. Why? Because now you know that the direction you went in wasn’t the best for your business. If you hadn’t made a decision, you wouldn’t know that. You wouldn’t know anything, in fact. Secondly, having made a decision also helps you and your team feel better because you have clarity. You know what you’re working on. You know what direction you’re heading in. You know what you need to do and why you’re doing it. Lastly, it demonstrates strong leadership skills. One of the things people look up to leaders for is their ability to make decisions. As a business owner, you need to be able to own that space within your business. To help you, let’s look at three major types of decisions business owners need to make.

Decision Making Scenario #1: Your Business Proposition

In this scenario, the type of decision you’re making impacts the business at a fundamental level. What is your business? Who do you serve and how do you serve them? What are your products and services? How do they get delivered? How do you make money? Essentially, this is figuring out your business model. Perhaps you have a ton of ideas about how you want to serve your customers. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe you know exactly who your customers are. But then again, maybe you don’t. At the early stages of your business or when you’re going through a major change, pivot or adding a new line of products/services, you’ll find yourself in this scenario. There are several decisions that need to be made here, but altogether, they’re your business model. Most people I work with come to me with this piece of their business unanswered and we work on it together.

To be able to make a decision on this, there are three major components that need to be considered: what your customers want and need, what your competitors currently provide and what you can do to stand out in the market. Once you’ve collected the information across these areas, you’ll be in a position to create some options for your business model, and then pick the one that resonates most with you. Don’t just go for the easy one, or the one that feels safest. Go for the one that excites you – the one that gives you butterflies in your stomach and goosebumps on your skin.

Decision Making Scenario #2: Your Business Direction

This decision is the output of the earlier decision (on your business proposition or your business model). Once you’ve decided what you want to do, you need to figure out how you’re going to get there. This is where a business plan or a roadmap will come into play. Knowing where you want to go and what you want to do is a prerequisite. If you’re not sure about that, then figure that out first. Once you have that, you can start crafting your plan or roadmap.

The way I like to do this is to break down my goal into 5 strategic areas: Sales, marketing, product, operations and finance. I then identify what I need across each of those and then break that down into smaller goals. Once that’s done, I can see the roadmap more clearly and it becomes easier to map out the step by step actions I need to take to make it all happen. I follow this structure with my clients. We first get their business model clarified – who they serve, how they serve them, how they deliver the products/services that serve them and how they make money doing that. And then depending on their strengths, their preferences and what feels good – expansive, stretching but still in line with their values – we identify the steps required to get there, starting from the goals and working backwards.

Decision Making Scenario #3: Your Mindset

This last decision is the most powerful one. In order to get anything done in your business, whether it’s deciding to make an investment or deciding that you will fill up your program or sell out your stock, it all starts with the decision. Why? Because what you set your mind to is what you’ll eventually manifest in your physical reality. This isn’t something we grew up realizing, nor is it something we’re taught in our corporate careers. But the world of entrepreneurship is abundant with this knowledge. And here’s how it plays out: If you decide that you will get something, you will unconsciously act and do the things required to make that a reality. It may seem farfetched, but it’s not. You will show up, deliver, add value, work towards, and anything else to make that decision come true – if you truly believe it. But when you don’t make that decision, it leads to an inconsistent set of actions on your behalf. You just won’t show up in the same way.

So how can you decide and change your mindset? It takes practice. It takes being understanding and curious as to why your mindset isn’t decisive or positive. You can explore why you choose to see things in a negative or inconclusive manner. And then, you absolutely need to practice making those decisions. Decide that you will post on social media today. Decide that you will meet a perfect client. Decide that your content is being devoured by all your ideal customers. Decide that your product will land in front of your target audience. Decide those things first and see the magic happen.

Decision Making and You

In the end, only you can take control and start making decisions. Eventually, you might be able to outsource some of these decisions, but when you’re in the early stages of starting and growing your business, it’s important that you shape it the way you want it to be. Start small, make decisions that are easy, and then grow from there. And with each decision, you want to ask yourself: Does this excite me? Does it give me butterflies in my stomach? Does it scare me a little but also get me really pumped? Does it give me goosebumps? Remember, the direction you’ll head in with your business is dependent on these decisions. And so you want your decisions to be expansive and push you without causing you to burn out. You’ve got this.

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How to Create an Authentic Brand

September 1, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

The world is full of businesses – and full of online businesses now, too. Knowing how to create an authentic brand gives you the opportunity to connect more deeply with your audience, creating strong bonds. And those bonds are what will keep them loyal, so long as you continue to be authentic.

Why does being authentic help?

As human beings, we’re all social creatures. Yes, even the introverts among us! And as social creatures, we all have deep-rooted needs to be part of a tribe, to connect with others and to feel understood and accepted. When you create a brand that is authentic, you open up the possibilities for others to see you and connect with you in the manner that is deeply ingrained in them. It also helps for people to connect a real person, and especially someone they can relate to, with the business they are either already doing business with, or could someday do business with.

What does being authentic as a brand entail?

The easiest way to create authenticity as a brand is build the environment that allows connection to your audience. And to do that, you need to stop hiding the person behind the brand. In other words, stop hiding yourself! People want to know you. People want to connect with you. People want to hear and share your story and your experiences. At the end of the day, people connect with other people, not with businesses. You make your business feel authentic through your brand. It is through your brand that you are able to have a voice and a personality that is associated with your business. If you’re a service provider, this is likely your voice and your personality. But for product-based businesses and for businesses with multiple founders or partners, you’ll craft your brand voice and personality to suit your business. And so knowing that being authentic as a brand means showcasing the “personality” and using your “voice” to talk about business and other topics, what are the specific things you can do to showcase the authenticity in your brand?

Talk like you normally would

First things first. To be authentic as a brand, you must master the art of writing as you would speak… so you can sound like a real person. A lot of us with corporate backgrounds have been conditioned to writing in a way that doesn’t sound AT ALL like what we sound like in real life. And that, unfortunately, makes it very difficult to connect with your readers, your audience, and your ideal customers. It makes sense though, doesn’t it? If you don’t sound like a real person, your reader won’t associate your brand with a real person. So write like you speak. Make it sound human. People like people. People don’t like businesses, and they especially don’t like corporate businesses. So stop sounding like one, and just be… you. That’s all they want.

Share your brand story

Next is something a bit more nerve-wracking to do. If you’re the type of person who likes to keep things private, this is going to push you a little. But it really helps you build authentic relationships with your audience, and that’s the aim here, isn’t it? So this next step is to develop your brand story and share it with your audience. The key here is to choose a brand story that is relatable. We all have stories we can tell about how and why we started our businesses and are where we are. But the key is to choose the angle that’s going to help you develop that bond with your audience. Of course, the only way to do that is to then share your story, and share it often so that you reach as many people across your audience as possible.

Side note: In my Unleash Your True Potential program, there is a lesson dedicated to finding your brand story. This powerful exercise helps create the connections discussed in this article.

Be honest and transparent

The third thing to focus on is transparency. In other words, be honest. There is nothing that will break any hard-earned trust faster than being caught in a lie. So choose your words and your stories carefully. Make sure you are upfront about anything that could potentially backfire. And always be honest. Being honest and open, and even vulnerable, has a lot more benefits than drawbacks. Even if you lose some of your audience because of something you share, you can rest assured that they wouldn’t have stuck around in the long run anyway, as evidenced by their jumping ship at the first disagreement. A true tribe will stick with you, so long as you’re always honest and transparent with them.

Connect and engage

And to build that tribe, you need to be connecting and engaging with the audience you have in your circles and across your platforms. But more than that, you need to be connecting and engaging with them in a real way. There is nothing more annoying than being spoken to with the fishy smell of a request lingering in the background. If you want a tribe – which you should want! – then build one in the same way you would build your friendships. Through mutual interests, real conversation and engaging with no other motive but to get to know each other.

Conclusion

In today’s day and age, being as authentic as possible is no longer an added advantage. It is an absolute need. Spending the time that it takes to build the brand that allows you to be genuine and authentic is a key business requirement. The question of how to create an authentic brand, then, becomes a key business discussion and should be given the rightful place in building your business and your brand.

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Starting a Business: Your Products and Services

August 25, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

When you’re starting a business, you’ll probably have lots of ideas. So much so that they might all be jumbled together. They bleed into each other, making it difficult to really give shape to any one idea. Not knowing how to separate and crystalize your ideas is a real but often not-talked-about obstacle to getting your business started. It can even be an obstacle for those who have existing products and services and want to offer something new.

If you’re currently in a corporate and looking to ‘escape” and start your own business, you can read all about when to to do that here.

Before we dive into putting together your products and services when you’re starting a business, let’s define a few things. This is how I define the following terms, because it helps when me (and my clients) know exactly what we’re referring to:

Products & Services: These are the major categories that give an idea of what you provide your customers. For example, these can be business coaching, journals, candles, photography services…

Offers: This is how you package your products and services to create something of high value to your customers. For example, 1:1 business coaching program with 12 60 min sessions, 1 year journal with manifestation pen, subscription box for handmade candles, wedding photography package with 150 edited photos and a physical photo album…

Getting started on your offer

Offers are how you position your products and services so that they become attractive to your customers. And to find out how to create an offer, you need to know your customers really well, listen to their frustrations, wants and needs, and find a way to put that together for them at a price that they are willing to pay. Let’s dive into this some more.

Take the pressure off your offer

The first thing to realize is that your offer doesn’t have to be your BIG offer, your main offer, or even a permanent offers. Businesses create offers and then change or remove them all the time. So take the pressure off, and realize that you not only can change your offer in the future, but that you most likely will. The reason for this isn’t that your offer will need “fixing up”, but rather, that you will definitely get feedback and should always look for ways to add more of what your customers want into your offer (and remove the thing they don’t want).

Understand your customers’ needs

The second thing that you need to do is map out all the things your customers are looking for when it comes to the products and services you provide. Once you have all of that written down, you can begin to create the offers that come up frequently in terms of their wants and needs. These can sometimes be super clear combinations that your target audience has specifically asked for, but they can also be pieces that you’ll put together.

Check back with your customers

The third thing you’ll want to do is to check back with your customers. Did you get it right? Is the offer that you’re putting together something they’re interested in? Is there anything they would change, add or remove? Getting feedback before you start saves you a lot of time and energy. When you gather feedback before you create your offer, you can be confident that your target audience is interested in it and will buy it.

Great, now you have your offer mapped out.

Articulate your offer

Next, you’ll need to find the absolute best way to describe it. When you do this, remember that there are people who want to know what the “nuts and bolts” of your offer are, and others who will be drawn to the benefits. You want to talk about both in order to maximize your chances of connecting their needs to your offer. Some people like to know how many minutes, modules and lessons are in a course. Others are sold on the transformation. And most need a bit of both.

Market and create your offer

Lastly, you’ll create your offer – while marketing it. There is no need to do this in succession. You absolutely can start marketing before your offer is ready. Create that intrigue, that curiosity. Begin to warm up your audience and get them ready to purchase as soon as your offer is available. If needed, you can create a waitlist. Otherwise, just start talking about your upcoming offer and let them know it’s coming soon!

Final thoughts

In the end, you run your business, and you have the ability to make all your business decisions in the ways that serve you and your customers best. So approach your offer-creation activities with an open mind and a willingness to experiment and play with it. This philosophy and way of running your business (and your life!) will serve you in ways that’ll make you wonder why you never did them in the first place.

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The Definition of Success

August 11, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

What is the definition of success to you? When you think of success, do you immediately think of money? We’re all so accustomed to associating success with money. After all, a successful person in business is someone who has moved up the ranks of the corporate ladder, or has their own business that brings in lots of revenue. Right? But success doesn’t have to be associated primarily with money. In fact, looking at success through other lenses has so many benefits.

What are the benefits of defining success through non-monetary factors?

The first thing that comes to mind when answering this question is that there are so many things to celebrate and consider an accomplishment that do not have to do with money. For example, when a client has a “win”, that’s also a win for me. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of a very genuine “thank you” for something you did, created or delivered to someone, then you know the feeling I’m talking about. And is that not a success? Imagine getting hundreds of those a month. Would that not give you a feeling of being successful in your business? So the benefit of looking at the impact your business has on your clients and your customers is that it opens up your focus point. Instead of focusing on the money, chasing the money, looking at ways to make more money… you’re now focusing on creating more impact. And with that impact, you will almost certainly make more money, but you’ll do it in a way that feels good.

Secondly, when you focus only on the monetary measures, you limit yourself to being able to celebrate only one metric. But on the other hand, if you had several measures of success, such as the client wins described above, along with some social media metrics, referral metrics, free event sign-ups, email subscribers, and also (very importantly) non-business measures such as hours per week spent working, being able to take evenings and weekends off, feeling grounded and happy, or excited and energized… then you increase the number of opportunities you have to see “success” in your business.

Lastly, when you include things in your success measurement that are non-typical business measures, such as how much time can spend with your kids, your spouse or your family, or that you can take an extra day off to help a friend or family member out quite easily, or that you’re able to sleep in on a day when you feel especially tired, or that your work doesn’t cause you anxiety or overwhelm, or that you genuinely feel happy all (or most of) the time. These things aren’t your typical success metrics, but when you think of them as a measure of your business success, you begin to realize that the success of your business isn’t just in the amount of money it brings in, but in the quality of life that gives you. And that is an absolute game-changer.

A New Definition of Success

So in the spirit of changing the way you look at and feel about your business, in order to create more excitement, more satisfaction, more gratitude and more joy, let’s redefine success. Let’s define success using measures that actual matter in your life. Below, I’ve listed my top 6 favorite measures of success for my business and my life. Feel free to take as many of them as you want, and make them your own! And remember to add anything that matters to you and begin to track it.

Success Measure #1: Happiness

As my business grows, my happiness grows. It’s a direct correlation. I love every new stage of my business, every new program or service I create and offer. Sure, there are times I get a bit stressed out because I have a few things going on at the same time. But I am never unhappy. And if that can’t be counted as success, what can?

Success Measure #2: Location freedom

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have really enjoyed being able to take my laptop and work from anywhere in the world. I spent time in Lebanon with my parents a couple of times over the past year, and was able to do some work from there. I went on two unplanned holidays with my husband, and managed to get an hour or so of work done every morning, which was all I needed to keep things on track.

Success Measure #3: Owning my schedule

Being able to increasingly move things around such as launch dates or free workshops has given me the freedom to plan my days, weeks and months in a way that allows me to do all the other things I want to do in my life.

Success Measure #4: Client wins

I built my business doing something I love, and all my clients have businesses that also capitalize on things they love too. So when a client has a win in their business, they are so excited. And of course, since my business is built on helping them, their happiness has a knock on effect on me. It’s more than just satisfying, it’s energizing.

Success Measure #5: Giving back

It’s so heartwarming that all the entrepreneurs I have worked with have a giving back pillar in their businesses through which they support causes they care deeply for. I eventually want to have 5 causes that I support, and this past year I was able to support one of them in providing food to the hungry in Lebanon (owing largely to the devaluation of the local currency).

Success Measure #6: Feeling appreciated

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve worked hard and hoped for some appreciation which never came. One of my measures of success is how appreciated I feel every time I work with my clients through my business. And the more appreciated I feel, the more successful I feel. Because that’s a reflection of the impact that I made and which, in turn, was acknowledged.

Today’s a great day to revise your definition of success

Maybe some day the word success will no longer immediately bring to mind the correlation with money. Until then, let’s all do our part, largely for ourselves and the shift the way we see our own success. Let’s rewrite our definition of success and share it with all those around us.

If you found this helpful in shifting your thoughts and your focus, share it with someone who would benefit from it too!