Ask for Help. You’ll Be Surprised.
I was faced with digging deep. I asked myself what the heck happened. I had to get past the bewilderment of “how can this be?” and had to look at the root cause of what had led me to these unfortunate circumstances.
I believe everything in life has a shelf life, a life cycle. Endings create openings for bigger and better dreams and opportunities, yet it is still a daunting and incredibly uncomfortable journey to embark upon.
The first person I reached out to was my counsellor. Feelings of shame, failure and fear needed immediate support. Once I had this in place, the question became; what is important to me? And what do I want to create?
Do I want to clear the slate, rebuild or modify my business?
My heart has always lead me to helping others so I decided I wanted to focus on what I do best, which is marketing training for business owners.
I needed to rebrand my program, “The 5 Marketing Essentials to Getting 50% more LIFFT™ for Your Business.” It was too much of a mouthful. Plus the name lacked energy and excitement. I turned to a long-time friend of mine for help with brainstorming a new name. She connected me with an old boss of hers who was great with taglines and advertising messages.
Out of this process came “Master Your Market™ – Achieve Purposeful Prosperity.
As part of this process, I developed a plan to host two complimentary webinars over a period of 10 days. These webinars would provide exceptional content. At the end of each, I would offer my NEW Master Your Market™ Online Group Program at a rock star price for a limited time.
This was a good plan, yet I had one big challenge. My email list was too small to sell the program to enough people. Even though this was the case, I wanted to test what I had learned from an online email marketing course I had just completed.
It was at this point, I realized I needed to ask my colleagues and business friends for help promoting my complimentary webinars. Since this was a pilot project, I was not in a position to financially remunerate individuals for helping me.
My thought was if someone I knew and respected asked me for help to promote an event or program, I would, hands down. I approached well over 40 people by writing them each a personal message. The response was fantastic. More than half said yes and posted it on Facebook right away. I felt deeply moved by their generosity.
Some got back to me promptly and said they didn’t promote others on Facebook. I appreciated these people responsiveness and respectful emails.
When it came to launching the webinars, I asked a friend to do an initial test run as a participant. She stayed online with me for the greater part of the morning. In the first round everything went sideways. The second round went well, yet there were several issues that concerned me.
I reached out to a technology expert I know from an association we belong to. I knew he was actively using the same webinar software I was struggling with. His sage advice helped resolve a core issue i faced less than 24 for hours before my live webinar launch.
There are so many other areas in which I asked for help this year. I’m sure at this point you get the picture of the power of asking.
As a result of the launch of the pilot version of Master Your Market™ Online Group Program this year, I have paved the foundation for a much bigger project for next year. All these steps and the help I received were paramount to reaching my goal of reshaping my business.
Lastly, I want to extend a great BIG Thank You to everyone who helped me this year. For me, it has been a huge reminder of what I have always believed ever since I was a little kid: people are intrinsically good.