It’s a glorious thing to run your own business. You get to be in charge, you get to set the direction. You decide what, how much and when you are going to work. You also choose just what skills you share. You also most likely need to learn some more — whether that’s your stage craft or something behind the scenes that no-one actually sees or appreciates, but which means you get to do the work you love to do.
Most of us have had to dust off or learn some new skills in the last year or two. With Covid enveloping the world, there has been a need to get creative about how you do what you do. Adages like ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ have come into their own!
Blend to build it better
In our Changemaker Central membership, aimed at supporting serious message based creative and passionate people who are looking to sustainably grow their businesses, we speak a lot about a ‘blended’ business approach, and building a ‘portfolio business’. What we mean by that is using your skills as a speaker, author AND coach.
Even if you have a lead skill — let’s say you identify as an author — you still need to use the skills of speaking and coaching (or consulting, or teaching or sharing) to build your business. It’s not enough any more to simply be one of these things. You have to blend them all to make more opportunities available for you and your business to stand out. You can build better products when you do, which means you can serve your audience better, and widen the net at the same time. That’s part of sustainable profitability.
What do you need to learn next?
We invite you to look at your products and see if you are using ALL your skills in what you have available. It may not be your favourite thing to do to get on a stage and speak, or to get all those baseline blogs done. But it is useful to get your visibility up. Perhaps you have some inner gremlins that need taming? Or maybe it’s more about marketing or financial know-how that will help you build your business into something stronger?
We can all learn to make the most of the talents we have, and we can all learn something new. Not to the level of expert — that would be distracting and not in alignment with you getting your message out there — but knowing how something works and how to brief others on how to do it, would open up the possibilities in your own business.
What will you add today?
Here’s our little call for you. Do a mini audit. What could you be doing or using that you are currently not — or not using fully? What can you repurpose, what can you extend or offer that does not presently exist which would make sense to your clients? What service could you provide that uses not your main skill, but the related ones that allow you to continue to give value in different ways or formats? This kind of enquiry is useful to do every quarter or so, it helps you get focused on always being right at the top of mind for all of your clients and prospects. It also keeps things ‘fresh’ for you — and you at the top of your game! And if you don’t know, get some help to identify what that is or what’s stopping you!
If you want any support to do this, reach out for a call or join The Connection Hub to get access to over 200 resources to keep you growing your speaker, author, and coach business.