As a business owner, there is always more than enough to keep you busy. Trust me, I know.
What with getting those sales in, building leads and converting them to customers, managing suppliers, dealing with invoicing, networking to build your contacts, promoting your business on social media, the list can seem endless, exhausting and sometimes pointless. I run four very different businesses - an award winning international training consultancy, KAPOW! Your Personal Branding Programme, From The Willow Tree Crafts & From the Willow Tree Home Decor & Fragrance. I also manage over 20 business networking groups in an area that stretches from Scunthorpe to Huntingdon, Newark to Newmarket. It gets busy. Very busy.
Those rose tinted ideas of an endless stream of new customers, a healthy cash flow, independence, financial freedom that we all dream of when we set up on our own can all seem very far away sometimes can't they?. When things aren't going the way you planned them, its so easy to get disillusioned by those other business owners you see at networking events, online, through your social media feeds who are doing so much better than you, have more sales than you, have more followers than you, and more to the point, are making sure you know about it. And they seem to be IN YOUR FACE the whole time. With all that success schizzle going on.
You want to know why?
Because they are telling their story. And you are listening. But you are not telling your story, and no one is paying you any attention. I'm sorry to break it to you, but the only person to blame for that is you.
If there is one aspect of your business you cannot afford to lose focus on, one that is critical to the success of you and your business, its your personal brand. Your personal brand is as important as your physical brand, if not more so as a business owner. Why?
Because people buy from people. Not from business cards, roller banners or funky downloadables. From people. And you need to give them the right reasons to want to work with you. You need to give them information, not just about what you offer, but the 'why' behind what you do, and the 'who' behind the idea. These elements are vital to helping your potential customers form an emotional connection with you, your brand and to help them build trust in you. They can't do that if you aren't telling them about it.
But if you are sitting on your hands, not telling your story, there is probably a good reason why - you don't really know what your story actually is.
And the very worst thing you can do is try and rewrite another persons story and sell it as your own. You won't believe it, and you won't be able to 'sell' it. Your potential customers won't believe it either. You need to start by investing some time in working out what your own 'who' and 'why' are. You need to write your own narrative. You need to have the confidence to do so and the means to get that story out to the right people. Even when other people don't like it.
Your story is your own to write and your own to tell. Not one of us is entitled to 'own' the service we provide or the products we sell. When you create a strong personal brand that you believe in, that represents who you are and why you do what you do, and you start to build your own tribe of people who trust you, buy from you and actively engage with you online & through face to face networking - it's highly likely you're going to piss a few people off. As long as your story is your own, and you believe in it, you live it, you love it and you keep telling it - sod them.
It's YOUR 'who'. It's YOUR 'why'. It's not anybody elses.