October 16, 2014 by Jesse Koren

How we Balance Work, Parenting, and Romance

People often wonder how we are able to lead 18 live events each year (52 days total), lead a team of 17 people, have hundreds of high-end clients, and still make time for romance, our boys, and self-care.

We have to admit, it’s not always easy...

Especially, this past Monday. It was our 7-year wedding anniversary. We had planned to take the whole day for ourselves for a hot tub, long hike, and plenty of time for a roll in the hay. 🙂

But on Monday morning, we realized that we were going to have to choose between keeping our word to our clients or taking the day to celebrate our love.

Have you ever had to choose between a commitment to work and a commitment to the love of your life?

Ten years ago, when we first launched our business, working during our anniversary would have been no big deal. Because there was so much conflict in our relationship, it was often easier for us to work instead of dealing with our emotions.

But these days, we actually love spending time with each other... and we were both really looking forward to our anniversary.

Before I share the big insight we had, I think it would be helpful for you to know what we promised our clients.

We promised this year’s Get Leverage Program would be simpler, more step-by-step, and much more doable than ever before.

The truth is, of all of our programs, Get Leverage has challenged our clients the most. More clients than I can count have made $10,000 (or more) in a month, through Heartselling™ (which we teach in the Client Attraction Summit and Client Attraction Mastery) and speaking to groups (which we teach in Six Figure Speaker). Only a few of our most successful clients have taken the Get Leverage strategies all the way to making millions of dollars.

But the potential of the Get Leverage program has always been there. The principles we teach in Get Leverage are exactly what helped us reach over 25,000 people without burning out and make over $10,000,000.

We just needed to re-organize our Get Leverage strategies so even our most beginning clients could set themselves up to not have to trade time for dollars for the rest of their life. And our more advanced clients would also have the tools to launch their home study courses and high-end group programs in a big way.

Unfortunately, we were going to need most of our Anniversary Day to make that happen.

When we realized we were going to have to sacrifice either our integrity or our commitment to our love during our Anniversary, we were both quite upset.

“Seriously??? We’re going to spend our Anniversary working!?"

Until we had an insight...

What if we asked ourselves a more inspiring question than “Why do we have to work today?”

What if we asked ourselves: “How could we honor both our commitment to our clients and our love?”

From this inspired question came an inspired answer: “What if we work for a good part of the day and have our anniversary a week later? And what if we added an overnight stay at a really luxurious hotel to our date?”

Suddenly our energy returned and with it, our excitement about re-inventing Get Leverage.

Because we had a turn-around, we are VERY excited to unveil a brand new Get Leverage to our clients tomorrow!

Now it's your turn: When you feel like you have to choose between work or love... how can you have BOTH???

Let us know your comments in the box below

September 3, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs

How to Discover Your Niche

When someone first told me I should choose a niche in order to attract more clients, I didn't get it.

I wanted to help everyone; and my training set me up so I could help anyone with anything. Choose a niche? I didn't want to for a long time. I resisted the idea and felt frustrated anytime another person told me the first thing I needed to do was choose a niche.

Maybe you've already heard that it's important to choose a niche (and maybe you're even wrestling with the idea like I was). Or maybe you're brand new in business and haven't yet considered how important having a niche is.

One of the things we've found, after teaching over 25,000 coaches and holistic practitioners how to attract their ideal clients and get paid well for the great work they do, is that once a good niche is chosen everything else falls into place.

In fact, discovering your niche is the first key to set yourself apart from the crowd and attract your most ideal clients. And it's one of the hardest decisions most coaches and entrepreneurs make while on the path to their first six-figure year.

One of the reasons it's so difficult is that most people misunderstand what a niche is. Some people think it's a specialty, like "authentic Thai massage." But a niche is not a specialty (meaning a way you do your thing differently from others who do the same thing).

We define a niche as: a specific problem that you solve for a specific group of people.

Why do we use the word specific here? Let's look at it this way. If you had a problem with bloating, cramping, nausea and constipation, would you rather see your family physician or would you prefer to see a practitioner who specializes in digestive disorders? The specialist, of course.

Why? Because you assume they have more extensive knowledge and experience to help you overcome your digestive distress and can get you the results more quickly than someone who is a "Jack of all trades, but master of none."

The other reason it's important is because your marketing message will speak to people directly, rather than not stand out for anyone (because it's too general).

So we highly recommend you become the specialist in your field so people who need what you offer can find you.

Cinder Ernst, Member of the $10,000 per Month Club

To demonstrate how this works, let's take a look at the story of one of our members of our $10,000 Month Club, Cinder Ernst. When Cinder came to us she was a fitness trainer and life coach. When she went through our niche discovery process, she realized that the best use of all of her talents and past experiences would be to help plus-sized women heal their knee pain.

Part of Cinder's discovery process came from the questions you're about to answer. During this process, she realized that she understands how plus-size feel about their challenges around their knee pain and what it stops them from doing. And she understands how they feel about exercising.

She knew that her passion is to help women move their bodies so they can have full, active lives. So Cinder's niche is helping plus-size women eliminate knee pain. She set up her website and marketing to speak personally to this group and has had a really positive response, including being seen as an expert in this area. Cinder now earns a healthy 6-figure income (working fewer hours than when she started with us) with this very specific niche.

To get you started on your niche discovery, here are 4 questions to ask yourself. Start making a "Niche brainstorm list" as you answer these questions.

Which problems have you faced and mostly healed in yourself?

We have found that for most coaches and holistic practitioners, there's a link between the work they do and their own life experience.

We encourage you to write down the biggest problems you have faced in your life and how you worked through those problems. Taking Cinders' example, she might list how she found a system to reduce her own knee pain, and perhaps faced struggles with exercise or body image.

In case you feel hesitant about choosing a problem you have been working through yourself, we want to give you some assurance that you don't have to be a master yet. We intentionally say "mostly healed" because you only need to be two or three steps ahead of your clients. They will get massive value from you if you can help them get beyond their current state and to the next level.

Which problems are you already helping people with?

One place to consider looking for clues as to what your niche should be is to ask yourself, "Who is already coming to me and what for?"You may notice that most of your clients happen to be women entrepreneurs or happen to be moms who are frequently overwhelmed by how to feed their kids healthy food. You may find that the same concerns, blocks, or interests keep coming up in your people. Make a list of what you notice.

Now look at your list and see which problems, categories, types of people, etc., make you feel excited. Let's say you wrote, people struggling with their weight – does this excite you as a possible niche? Can you get more specific? Maybe when you get more specific it's former athletes who, now that they're older, are finding it harder to keep their weight at a healthy level.

Which problems you want to become an expert at or learn more about?

You may have people coming to you with problems that you know you can solve for them and you might enjoy doing it, but you're not curious enough to learn more about it. Maybe you've maxed out on this area.

Perhaps there are other possible niches you want to fully heal or master.

Taking our knee pain example again, let's say you have dealt with knee pain and only get it every few months, but it is still frustrating when you get it and you want to immerse yourself in mastering healing knee pain. And you want to help other people get through it themselves. It's a problem you can picture yourself working with in the future, learning more about, and expanding your business around. These are the problems you want to add to your niche brainstorm list.

Which problems do you want to be thanked profusely for having solved?

Recall a time when someone was really passionate about what you did for them, and how this made you feel. Take some time to consider what you're really passionate about. One of our members recently shared that she LOVES the feeling she gets when someone tells her they are feeling better (she's a Naturopath).

What are the specific ways you want to change your clients' lives and have them say thank you for? Add these specific problems you could possible solve to your niche brainstorm list.

This last category is one of the most important ones, because it adds in your passion. And choosing a niche that you're not passionate about is not something we recommend.

One of the ways we got more specific about our niche was when we did some visioning work and realized our personal mission is to create a HUGE wave of transformational leaders who change the world. We define a transformational leader as an entrepreneur whose clients are getting great results, and where he or she is earning $10,000 (or more) each month. Whenever we get a heartfelt thank-you or a passionate testimonial from one of our graduates who are experiencing this kind of success, we feel so fulfilled. We know we're on the right track and we know why we're doing this work.

This is what we want you to think about here, on a really specific level. List which solutions you want people to have that they will thank you for.

These four questions are a good start in helping you discover your niche. Once you have your niche brainstorm list, try one on for 90 days. Start sharing with people how you help people using specific language based on your niche...and watch how your ideal clients become attracted to you.

The goal in the process of discovering your niche

The goal in this work on your niche is not to put pressure on yourself to find the perfect niche right away. It's a process. But it's well worth the effort when you begin to connect with the clients who really need you, pay you well, and keep you excited about the work you do.

Tell us what you think...

July 17, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs and Jesse Koren

How to Get Big Influencers to Promote You

Have you ever wanted someone with a large email list to introduce you to their people?

If so, you’re not alone (and you’ll get a TON of value from this article).

We’ve had hundreds of well-meaning people ask us to promote them.

And we can understand why. Because we’ve grown our email list to over 20,000 people and we get around 1,000 people coming to our Client Attraction Summit each year, we are in a position to double, triple, or even quadruple someone’s business, practically overnight.

But you may have noticed that we only promote 10-12 of our friends and colleagues to you each year via email.

We are extremely careful and highly selective about who we introduce to you.

We thought you would like a window into our thought process around…

How do we decide who to promote?

What are the 3 biggest mistakes we see people making when they ask big influencers to promote them?

And how can you avoid these mistakes to get big influencers to promote you?

We look for three things in the people we promote:

Value
Generosity
Integrity

Let’s start with Value…

Are your free giveaways and programs high-value and high-quality?

The mistake that some people make is that they ask big influencers to promote a program they don’t yet feel fully confident about.

Honestly, we are fans of launching “imperfect” programs that you improve over time (as one of our mentors once said, “Every master was once a disaster.)”

But if you ask a big influencer to share your work with the world, make sure you first feel very proud of what you’re asking them to promote…both the free giveaway AND any programs their people would purchase from you.

Quality really matters in this day and age of people being bombarded with so many offers. The last thing you want is someone coming back to the person who promoted you and saying they weren’t happy with what they signed up for.

As an example of high-value and high-quality, our friend, Callan Rush, wrote an ebook called “Wealth through Workshops.” I (Sharla) read it and even though we’ve had over 10,000 people sign up for our live events, I still got a TON of value from it.

So when they told us that they would let anyone on our email list have a free copy of their ebook, we got really excited and jumped on the opportunity to share it.

Your first step is to make sure you feel rock-solid about the value and quality of what you’re offering.

Next, let’s talk about Generosity…

Do you lead with what you can give or what you can get?

The second biggest mistake is to make the short term gain more important than the long term relationship.

Many people have emailed Thrive, asking us to promote them. They think that offering us commissions would be enough of an incentive for us to promote them. Honestly, that’s the last thing we think about when promoting someone.

Commissions are nice, but there is no amount of money we would take to promote someone we don’t know very well.

We only promote people who we have a relationship with. Our Joint Venture Partners are friends before they are partners. They are people we call when we are having a challenge in our business. They share their best advice, business systems, and resources with us. And we do the same for them.

Our best partners don’t do tit-for-tat. They lead with generosity. So much so, that they inspire us to be generous with them.

As an example, Callan and her business partner, Justin Livingston, have been friends for years. Callan served as a trainer for our company when our son Jacob was about to be born. And Justin was a big part of our marketing team during this same period. After working with us here at Thrive, they moved on to start their own company and we’ve stayed in touch all this time.

They know we offer high-value and high-quality work, so they have been endorsing us every other month at their “Magnetize Your Audience” live event. They share stories about how we recognized Callan’s talent and believed in her when she was getting started.

And she shares about who we are and the results our clients get. And then they offer our Client Attraction Summit to the people at their event. After the event, they have been sending us 50-70 registration forms, filled out by their participants who want to attend our live event.

How generous is that?

We don’t even have to travel to their event to speak. They make the offer for us. We love how easy they make it for us.

We recommend you lead with generosity and make the long term relationship important when trying to get other people to promote you.

Lastly, let’s talk about Integrity.

Do you follow through with your promises?

And if you break your word, do you find a way to get back into integrity?

If we introduce a joint venture partner who makes a promise they don’t keep, it damages trust.

And while we can’t control what our partners do, we can get to know the character of our partners so that we can make the best decision as to whether or not they’ll deliver on their promises to our clients.

This is why it’s important to get to know your partners before doing business with them. You get to witness whether they keep their promises or not.

Miscommunication happensand everyone breaks their word at some point. But not everyone takes the time to clean it up and make it right again.

We’ll use Callan and Justin as an example again:

Several months ago, they promised to promote us at one of their events and there was a misunderstanding and it didn’t happen as we expected.

Instead of just apologizing, Justin offered to send an email out to their entire email list of over 70,000 people, introducing us to them. This restoration of integrity actually had us trust them more, because we got how much they value our relationship and the keeping of their promises.

You know how relationships just get deeper and more solid as you deal with the tough stuff? It’s HOW people deal with the tough stuff that shows you how much they value the relationship.

You will certainly have misunderstandings with your joint venture partners. And how you deal with these places where it feels that the integrity is out of balance will determine whether or not you will continue to stay in partnership with them.

A bonus tip: Most joint venture partners care more about reciprocation than they do commissions.

Your ability to reciprocate is a key factor. So you’ll find that most of the people you “play with” in the realm of joint venture partners will have promotion power that matches what you have to offer.

But reciprocation can come in lots of different forms. So don’t overlook other ways to reciprocate.
What resources can you support them with (can also be personal resources)?
Who can you introduce them to?

The bottom line is this: It’s all about the relationship.

And most relationships start by meeting someone in person and leading with generosity.

We recommend you start attending more live events to get to know people you want to connect with. And lead with generosity whenever you can.

We want to model this for you now…Because we know Justin and Callan provide SO much value, they lead with SO much generosity, and because they are such high integrity people, we decided to surprise them by writing this entire article that showcases why they are one of the best partners we’ve ever had.

If you’re inspired by Justin and Callan and would like a free copy of their ebook, “Wealth through Workshops,”

Enjoy! And please let us know what you got from this article in the comments below.

Tell us what you think...

July 3, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs

How to Position Yourself As An Expert

Maybe you don’t yet feel like an authority… But you’ve heard that you need to figure out how to position yourself as an expert if you want to become more attractive to your potential clients.

Many people think that they have to wait until they have the level of expertise of their mentors to start positioning themselves as an expert. Or maybe you think you need to wait until you’ve written a book or worked with thousands of people.

If you take this route, you’ll be waiting a very long time. And you’ll be missing out on so many opportunities to serve people who really need your help.

We’ve seen many of our $10,000 Month Club Members take off in their business big time by changing one thing when they meet new people.

When they used just one of the tips in the video below on how to position yourself as an expert, people started responding to them differently. They got more respect, more clients and more referrals.

Watch the video now and then answer the questions below.

Now that you’ve watched the video, here is a short set of questions to ask yourself:

1. Which client success stories can you share that will have people see you as an
expert who gets results?

2. If you’re new to the work you’re doing, what can you bring in from your past
that can give you a high level of positioning?

3. What can you be the “Creator of?” (Even if you don’t have ways to position
yourself as an expert using the first two tips, there IS something YOU can
be the “creator of.”)

Once you’ve figured out your best angle for positioning yourself, here’s an extra tip:
Make sure you always include humanity when you share your expertise (or you may seem arrogant). More about this in another post…

Tell us what you think in the comments below…

PS. Another bonus tip: Being an author of a book is huge for your positioning. And most people think it has to take a long time. But my friend and colleague, John Eggen, wants to share how you can write your book in as little as 90 days.

If you choose to position yourself as being the “Creator of” something and writing a book is in your future, I invite you to join me on an upcoming interview with John on how to "Write a Transformational, Client-Attracting Book Fast that Makes Up to $150,000 Before It's Published.”

On this live telephone interview, John will share strategies to get your book out there in a big way that were used by world-renowned business gurus he has worked with, including Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hansen, Robert G Allen, Ken Blanchard and Bob Proctor and the late Dr. Stephen Covey.

Click Here to grab your spot on this live call

Tell us what you think...

June 25, 2014 by Sharla Jacobs

How to stay inspired and motivated

Do you ever wake up in the morning and don't "feel like working today?"

If your answer is yes, then you're probably doing some work you wish you didn't have to do.

I shot this short video for you to share a little technique for how to stay inspired and motivated.

Watch the video now and tell me what you think