One Coach

To deliver effective product copy, you need to get in the following frame of mind in regards to your prospect:

• What are their needs?
• What are they thinking about?
• How do I express my product or service in those ways?

One approach that accomplishes this almost every time is hypnotic storytelling.

Whenever you tell a story, you are getting into the person’s unconscious mind. In many ways, you’re slipping past the radar, their defense system, and you’re getting the story to go in. Furthermore, humans make sense of the randomness of their lives by telling a story about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging offers an easy way to create powerful word-of-mouth “buzz” for your product, service or business.  But only if you use it correctly.

Most people approach a blog (short for weblog) like an online diary.  They write their personal thoughts, feelings or ideas about a particular topic or subject, and then sit back and hope people read it. 

In reality, a blog is far more than an online diary.  It’s a mini Web site that is instantly and easily updatable.  And because you do it yourself, a blog doesn’t cost an arm and a leg every time you want to update it or make a change.

Blogs offer three advantages for businesses with limited marketing budgets:

Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of what’s currently going on in your life, and no matter what failures you’ve experienced, you are capable of greatness. Sometimes this requires a great deal of rewiring of your present beliefs to achieve a more positive perspective and put yourself in the direction of success, but you must go for your passion!

Now, where’s a good place to start or continue your advance towards greatness? Your marketing. Once you create or use marketing materials that grab your prospect, sucks them in, and compels them to read every word, you’re on your way to success. In this way, you’ll be able to cut through the thousands of sales messages they’re exposed to on a daily basis. You’ve got to differentiate yourself and infiltrate your prospect’s psyche.

Read the rest of this entry »

Would you be interested in learning some practical steps that you can take right now to grow your business — regardless of the state of the economy?

OneCoach CEO John Assaraf hosted a webinar on that topic Tuesday. More than 2,100 people registered – and they got some action steps that they are putting into place right now to find more clients, and increase their sales, revenues and profits.

The response to this event was so overwhelmingly positive that we’ve made our recession-proofing webinar available here.

There’s no charge, and you will definitely gain some practical tips and tools that will help you grow your business (and sleep better at night) through the tough times and right into the economic recovery.

When you have the right mindset, you can see opportunities where others see only challenges. This could actually be the perfect time to build your business — while your competitors are retreating. Check out our recession-proofing webinar, and then plan to make 2009 your best year yet.

In the old game of business, the prevailing mantra was “high leverage, high profit, high payoff.”  In the new game of business, the mantra needs to be “love, serve, and love some more.”

What do love and service have to do with running a business?

It all has to do with the hierarchy of human interaction, which consists of three levels: obey, serve and love.

Obey.  Suppose you call a company to help you solve a problem.  You ask to receive the service a certain way and they say, “I’m sorry, that’s against our procedures.”  This is the lowest level of human interaction because the company is more concerned with obeying their own rules than helping to solve your problem. 

Read the rest of this entry »

What should business owners be doing everyday to maximize their time for a return on their investment? For one, spend ample time with your customers. Build their loyalty and they’ll refer your business. Keep a constant pulse on their satisfaction, so you’re providing an amazing service or product now, instead of putting out fires later.

You also need to invest a good deal of time and research in your hiring, recruiting and development process. Yes, you are the CEO, you are a genius and you use your wisdom daily. However, you can not attend to each matter of your business with the same exact energy and potency. You’re eventually going to have to hire on.

And if you’re like many entrepreneurs, then your abilities may be lopsided, excelling at some areas, but lacking to great degrees in others. So it’s very likely that you will need to face hiring soon enough. To hire more effectively, you need to develop a healthy candor about your own capabilities. This will help you pinpoint what type of help to hire on.

And as people are not always as they initially seem, they may not turn out to be a good fit. If this happens, you simply need to let them go. It’s not personal, it’s business. The wrong staff will hold your business back from its true potential. And you’ll actually be holding that employee back as well – there’s obviously somewhere else where they’d be a better fit and be able to contribute more.   

Above all, never lose sight of the infinite possibilities that surround you. You must overcome the frustrations of starting or running a business and concentrate on the glory of opportunity.

This post is the sixth in a series of excerpts from OneCoach CEO John Assaraf’s interview with Rita Gunther McGrath, co-author of The Entrepreneurial Mindset, and MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth. See the first post in this series here.

Small-business owners face many challenges and decisions, in marketing, sales, management and other areas. Even if you excel in all of these, your hard work may be for naught if you should encounter legal difficulties. 

If you are faced with  penalties, liabilities and lawsuits, your personal and business assets may be in jeopardy.  The issues identified here are generally not “fun” to deal with.  But it is better to deal with them now, rather than face potentially door-closing consequences later.

Here are some legal issues that all small-business owners should be aware of. We’ll introduce more legal topics and explore these in more depth in subsequent posts. 

Forming an entity.  Even solo entrepreneurs with no employees, working out of their home, should consider forming an entity.  Why?  Creating a business entity is like creating another person – one that you control, and that is responsible for all of the financial and decision-making aspects of your business.  If you do everything through your entity (contracts, leases, bank accounts, etc.), and observe proper formalities, your personal assets will be greatly protected from liabilities caused by the business.  (All businesses create some liability, though it can range from great to small.)  Your home, your personal bank accounts – those are personal assets that could be seized by a creditor if you do not pay the business bill, or make a bad hiring decision, or for mistakes made by employees.  

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is the third in a series of excerpts from OneCoach CEO John Assaraf’s interview with business consultant Mitch Axelrod, author of The New Game of Business.

Companies like Federal Express, Amazon and YouTube get a lot of press for “changing the game” by revolutionizing their industries.  But those kinds of mega-success stories are few and far between.

Fortunately, you don’t have to completely reinvent your industry in order to be a game changer.  All you have to do is make a real difference in the marketplace.

For entrepreneurs and small-businesses owners, making a difference means setting a higher standard to which others in your industry have to aspire.  Rather than trying to copy what others in your industry are doing, you strive to make them play your game.

The hard part about becoming a game-changer is figuring out how to elevate your game in a way that actually sets a new and meaningful (to the customer) standard.  Most people are not trained to think that way.  Instead, they’re taught to follow someone else’s system and do what everyone else is doing.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is the fourth in a series of excerpts from OneCoach CEO John Assaraf’s interview with publicity expert Paul Hartunian.

The primary goal of every press release is to get the reporter to call you for more information.  Therefore, your press release should never tell your whole story.

Why?

Because if you can tell your whole story in one or two pages, it probably means you don’t have much of a story to tell.  More important, if your press release tells the entire story, what motivation does the reporter have to call you?

When a reporter calls you for more information, that’s how you wind up getting on radio shows for an hour instead of two minutes. That’s how you get a full page in the newspaper instead of two inches in a column where they barely mention your name.

Your press release should seduce the reporter into calling you. 

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve seen the headlines and heard the talking heads on TV – it’s pretty much a consensus that we’re in a recession, probably a global one that will continue through 2009, depending on who you listen to. A lot of people are already cutting back on their spending, and that’s how these things become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
It’s too bad, because a lot of people are going to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime.
 
Here’s what we mean. When you first hear that a recession is coming, like everyone else, you probably think it’s the worst thing that could happen.
 
But it’s actually the perfect time to take the initiative and build your business. Think about it. While other small businesses are cutting back on their marketing, you can go out and capture market share. And when the upswing comes (it always does) you are positioned for explosive growth. And meanwhile, you’re making more money, because you’re growing your client list every day!
 
It’s true – this is the best time we’ve had in decades to build your business. With that said, you MUST know the two keys to growing your business faster now. And OneCoach CEO John Assaraf is going to reveal those in a special call on Nov. 11.
 
Why? John has had incredible success in a variety of industries. He’s authored two New York Times bestsellers, including last summer’s “The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom and Live an Extraordinary Life.”  
 
Here’s what John has decided: When people are hurting, you do what you can to help. He’s going to share his expertise in how to achieve the right mindset, as well as build the client list that you really need to grow your business and make more money now.
 
Register for the call now, and plan to make 2009 your best year yet – regardless of the recession!