The economy’s crashing, so you better slash your rates, right?

Sure, if you want to project fear and a lack of confidence. I don’t care what you’ve heard about the economy, etc. If you treat your contribution as worth less, so will others. You do NOT want to be the person people hire because you’re cheap!

There’s an underlying contempt for money when you encourage people to hire you because you’re cheap. You’re telling your customers that being paid well isn’t important to you. Even worse, you’re telling your customer and yourself that you don’t deserve to be paid well. How attractive is that?

It’s a downward spiral: your clients will invest less, get less back, see you as less valuable, and you’ll find yourself struggling for less and less. You lose all credibility. A better strategy is to charge more and make sure the value you give is even better.

When you stand in who you are without apology, when you are fully and fearlessly authentic, you will REPEL people. You will scare them off! This is wonderful. The more you clear out the people who don’t like or understand or appreciate you and your products, the EASIER it is for your fans to find you. If you aren’t repelling anyone, you’re not doing your job!

You’ll never please people who are not “your people,” but you can divert your energy and your self respect by trying to make everybody your friend or customer. Cut them loose. Instead of trying to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded, embrace scaring them off.

They aren’t your customers and they aren’t your friends. Self respect is very attractive to good health, wealth, and love.

Your naysayers may come around on their own. Focus on your fans.

I’ve noticed the more “professional” I try to sound, the more invisible I become. I sound like everybody else. I disappear. My conversation partner’s eyes glaze over then dash around for something of more interest.

As soon as I let loose and say something outrageous like “I’m the Money Magic Queen,” people wake up. “Really?” they ask. “What’s that?” I end up with more relationship and credibility than if I’d just stuck to the usual credentials (author, trainer, international speaker, certified coach).

The more authentic you are, the more visible you’ll be to your people, just like the full moon coming out from the shadow of the eclipse.

Yes, it’s scary. Many people will tell you that you can’t afford to lose the snakes! It takes a leap of faith to trust in the attractiveness of who you are when you’re not pleasing others.

PREVENT HATE will host a Twitter Chat with the US Assistant Secretary of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at 10:00 a.m. PST on Tues. Sept. 15. This will be an excellent opportunity for the general public to interact with a senior federal official in charge of ensuring equal access to housing and community development for socially disadvantaged groups. Are you on Twitter? If so, I hope you’ll participate.

In addition, could I please trouble you to send some shout-outs to your friends about this in case they may be interested? We would like to ensure as large an audience as possible asking relevant questions to the Asst. Secretary. Any help you could provide us generating a large audience, and increasing our followers, on Twitter would be most welcome and highly appreciated. Our Twitter page is twitter.com/preventhate

You can get more info. about the upcoming chat from our blog at http://preventhate.wordpress.com/

Thanks,
Morgana

media magnet

Here’s the specific email that came in:

“I want my work/service to be a Money Magnet for me through it’s impact in transforming lives but I do not choose to promote myself or to be identified only with my work/service offering.”

Can you relate? It’s so much easier to promote other people than ourselves, and we want to be recognized as more than just our job.

I’m going to give you the solution sweet and sour.

First the sour: If you really do have an impact on people and you transform their lives, I believe you have an ETHICAL DUTY to let the world know! You may choose to withhold your gift and hide under a rock, but honey you will suffer for it in the end.

Stop thinking about yourself. Think about helping other people. It’s about caring more about the pain of others than your fear of of being judged or rejected.

And as soon as you get that, we get to the sweet:
If promotion hurts, you’re doing it wrong. Pain is overrated, and it’s a good signal that there’s a better, easier way to get what you want.

Nice, huh?

1) First get clear on what you’re “promoting.”

You don’t  have to promote yourself. And forget all those classes and elevator speeches and networking meetings. It all feels so desperate. Unless you like networking meetings and the food is good.

Take a moment, take a breath, and be that human being you really are. What do you know about the human condition? What do you know about pain and redemption? What do you BELIEVE?

THIS is what you promote. And you ONLY do it in the ways that are easiest, truest, and most fun for you.

2) Do what’s fun.

If my business depended on cold calls and networking meetings, I’d be broke. Even coffee meetings–which work great for my friend Heather–deplete my energy without bringing me clients.

I feel like I HAVE to prove myself in those situations. Ick ick ick. It’s not fun for me, so it doesn’t work!

Do the thing you like to do best. Delegate or scrap the rest. If it feels like work to you, it probably feels like work to the person on the other side of the table.

Radio interviews, teleclasses, blogging, facebook, and this newsletter are just EASIER for me. This is an introvert’s dream job! No heels, no mascara, and I don’t have to prove anything in 30 seconds.

We are the LUCKIEST people in business history in regards to attracting our ideal clients in unlimited abundance: the internet is free! And it’s efficient. You reach hundreds, thousands, and millions of people, and you all the time in the world to BUILD RELATIONSHIP. (See my next point.)

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web traffic

Want more website traffic? Baffled by Social Media?

It’s EASY. Here’s what to do:

• Link back to your site when you post comments on well trafficked blogs, twitter, facebook.

• Put your website on your YouTube videos. (Facebook and YouTube are MUSTS for web traffic.

• Include your “gravitar” (got to http://en.gravatar.com/) with your posts. (Your photo posts automatically when you enter your email address.)

• “Anchor” your keywords everywhere: that means hyperlink your most important keywords back to your site when you post around the web.

• Circulate articles. Create your own blog. Create a group page and a fan page on Facebook. (I’ve gotten so much business and international exposure from being on Facebook that it blows my mind.)

• Be a friend, not a salesperson, when you connect with people on social networking sites. Post amusing tweets. Don’t spam your friends. Don’t be pushy or icky.

• Ping your tweets: they’ll show up on LinkedIn and other places Twitter doesn’t go… yet.

• Get a wordpress blog, hook it up to social media, and add new content all the time.

• Have social networking and “forward to a friend” links on your newsletters.

And that’s how I get traffic. That, and getting a lot of radio and press.

Once you get traffic to your site, bribe your visitors to take action (sign up for something) with a gift. Website visits that lead to no action are a waste of bandwidth.