What Fuels You?

Life—and work—runs better with high octane fuel. The inevitable bumps in the road—frustrations with clients, partners and situations—are smoother when you’re burning the high octane stuff.

Need a better fuel source? Generate your own supply by connecting the deep purpose in your work with what you do every day. It goes beyond revenue and productivity goals. Dig deep to what really matters most to you as you build your business. Consider 3 success stories:

Dad with a mission: A consultant and new dad is exquisitely clear on his motivation—building a bigger, better life for his family. It gets him through some long days and reminds him to take time out to play, laugh and connect.

Career-changer: An advisor spends her career helping others transition to new work—and loses her job to the economy. She uses the fuel she generates from creating “ah ha” moments for clients to start and sustain her own firm.

Social entrepreneur: A consultant contemplates her values and starts a company to protect children. Drop-kicking industry expectations, she creates an integrated work and home life that feeds her to do more.

What fuels you?

Ready. Fire. Aim

Gen. Stanley McChrystal. BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward. They have sparked some spirited discussions with crisis communications and leadership experts. How could savvy, high-visibility pros go so wrong?

Clearly, they both would have benefitted from a little more aiming and a lot less firing. But it would be a shame if our only lesson from their stunning blunders is to be afraid to take a risk.

Professional advisors are by nature risk-averse. Most of us were trained analytically. We want predictable, accurate results most of the time. It’s what clients pay us for.

But what if what we really need to do—sometimes—is to fire first? Interpreting a highly technical IRS guideline might not be the place to experiment. But choosing to stop working on—or delegating—a predictable (yet mind-numbing) revenue stream to create white space could be just the ticket.

Forging new territory never comes with a money-back guarantee. So yes, learn from the gaffes made by the warrior and the CEO. But don’t let it rob you of the courage to take a calculated risk.

Ready. Fire. Aim. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Summer Solstice: Rejuvenate Your Practice

June 21. The start of summer and the longest day of the year. The perfect turning point—solstice—to assess your 2010 progress. Maybe give yourself a kick in the pants since the year is about half over. Well, there is that.

But it’s a great excuse to see the flip side. You’ve been working hard to make your practice sizzle and grow. How much fun are you having? Are you enjoying yourself and those you love? Do you come to work feeling alive and refreshed? I thought so.

Time to throw some summer in your solstice. Here are three easy ideas to create your own summer solstice time outs.

Time Out #1: Grab your child (or borrow one) and let them set your agenda for an afternoon. Do whatever, wherever, whenever. Repeat as often as necessary to remember what joy looks like.

Time Out #2: Spend a day indulging in your favorite pastime—no excuses permitted. A juicy novel in the hammock? Check. A day tinkering on your ‘68 Mustang? Check. An outing at the beach, complete with a tailgate barbeque? Check.

Time Out #3: Give something to someone who needs you. Visit your grandmother. Serve in a homeless shelter. Surprise your mate with their perfect date—just the two of you.

Indulge a little. Come back renewed and sassy. Repeat.

Capturing Your "Only"

You know you need to differentiate yourself from others in your space but some days it just ain’t easy. One trick: think like a journalist. Remember the lesson from high school? Who, what, when, where, why and how.

Who are your clients? Consider industry, function, location, complexity, position, gender, ethnicity and more. What do they have in common?

What do you offer them? Be specific. You aren’t just the title on your business card. Drill down and consider all that you bring to the party. Perhaps you speak Spanish or have a highly tuned ability to mediate disputes. Don’t be shy—these are attributes your sweet-spot clients will truly appreciate.

When do they need you? Think triggers, like business events (buy/sell, merger, spin-off, new product line) or personal (promotion, marriage, birth, divorce, death). What trends and influences make them need you more?

Where are your clients? Do you practice locally, regionally, nationally or internationally? Do you have deep or broad geographic expertise that clients value?

Why do you matter to your clients? Remember, clients buy based on emotion—on how you make them feel. Do they feel more confident, safer, smarter, faster, richer when they work with you? Think about what they gain by being part of your tribe.

How are you different? Look at it from the client experience—from how you first attracted, engaged and consulted with them to how they experience you throughout the relationship. Don’t forget to include your distinct personality and style—it’s part of your “only” package.

Who, what, when , where, why, how. Try it to capture your “only”.

Staple Yourself

Alan Webber (of Fast Company fame) found a new use for HBS Professor Ben Shapiro’s “staple yourself to an order” concept: applying it to solve social problems that plague us. Think about eliminating hunger, homelessness and child abuse in our time. He’s got some great ideas well worth a look.

But why limit yourself to social issues? Your consulting, advisory or coaching practice could benefit from stapling yourself to a critical issue or two. Consider the big 3:

Attracting the right clients. Staple yourself to your potential clients’ experience. Are you, your team and your marketing collateral focused on your sweet-spot? For whom do you produce your best results? Are you repelling the bad-fits early in the attraction process or are you wasting valuable time on non-starters? What happens to prospects who become clients? Do they become apostles for your brand or do they fade into the background while you are dazzled by the next opportunity? Ask tough questions and be very attentive to the answers.

Boosting margins. Take a closer look at your business model. Staple yourself to that. Do you have pricey partners (including you) doing low billing rate work? Your senior talent could be waiting for the right moment to bolt. How well are you leveraging your intellectual capital across multiple platforms? What investments are you making in fostering innovation—creating white space and higher margins? If you were on the outside looking in, would you buy your business? A stable, growing enterprise with a deep story is worth far more than a series of one-off projects. How much of a marketplace premium would you command?

Courting media attention. So, you’ve got a killer concept and figure the media should be beating a path to your door. Not happening? Bring out the staple gun. Whose attention do you want to attract? Why should they care about you? What are you doing that is newsworthy to their audience? Are you investing consistent time and effort developing—and sharing—interesting, media-friendly content? Recycling the same old ideas will not get you headlines or influence. And how quickly do you respond to media inquiries? Do you come off as smoke and mirrors or the real deal?

Attracting the right clients, boosting margins and courting media attention. Staple yourself to those.

Competition: 3 Strategies for Professional Advisors

Competition in sports is good. Your personal win/loss record is public—an incentive to keep you sharp. Consistently high performers track their competitors but remember to always play their own game.

Competition in professional services can be a good thing too. In fact, there is an added advantage: having competitors often means there is an established market for your niche. So instead of trying to sell what you do (try getting people to watch synchronized swimming), your challenge becomes selling you.

You can learn a lot about marketing—your services, your practice and your firm—by looking outward. Take a look at the firms you consider your toughest competition. But don’t stop there—study the brands you most admire and envision the firm you’d like to create. And then consider these 3 strategies.

Imitation. Navigate the websites and compare the marketing collateral of your toughest competitors. Be brutally honest. If you could black out the logos, could you tell the difference between them? Imitation is easy—that’s why so many do it. The more you look like everyone else, the more your services sell like commodities. The best margins do not go to imitators.

Aspiration. Don’t limit yourself to the usual suspects. Take a look at any brand you admire. Would you like to be the Nike of technology consultants? The Ferrari of estate attorneys? The Starbucks of wealth advisors? How do your most admired companies build their brand? What does your firm need to do, say and be to enter your version of their territory? Note to self: is my firm truly committed to living our aspirational brand?

White space. Creating white space in your specialty is an art form. It defies competition—you may well have to create your own market for it. The first PC (IBM). The personal financial planning software that spawned an industry (Intuit). The pricing model that changed how people buy and listen to music (Apple). You’ll note the innovator isn’t always the last one standing—it takes vision, passion and superb execution to carry this off.

Imitation. Aspiration. White space. Which speaks to you?

Avoiding The Camel

Your work is giving—or, more precisely, selling—advice. How well are you selling yourself and your firm?

Let’s agree that being compelling to your sweet-spot clients is a must. Why then do so many firms—from 1-person shops to some mega names—insist on watering down what makes them distinct? Why do otherwise savvy partners fail to build a strong personal brand that aligns their talents and passions with their firm?

Three words: lizards, trolls and camels.

The lizard rules. The lizard is the part of us that is satisfied with the ordinary (for more about the lizard brain, read Seth Godin’s “Linchpins”). Reaching for more feels too risky. Unsafe. The website that says: “our service, our people, our technology are second to none” was written by the lizard. When you find yourself holding back, afraid to shoot higher, the lizard is in charge.

The troll appears. You overcome the lizard to firmly stake your territory—you publish an article, write a blog post, or make a bold statement in a speech. That’s when the trolls appear. Trolls are critics who take perverse pleasure in tearing others down. In fact, you haven’t conquered the lizard if you haven’t attracted a few trolls. Your job with trolls is simple. Ignore them. Engaging trolls only fires them up for more criticism. Who needs that? Let them go find someone else to annoy.

You create the camel. You’ve subdued the lizard enough to attempt something compelling, but haven’t quite been able to ignore the trolls. The result? Camel territory. Yes, the camel that was a horse drawn by committee. Camels are great if you’re crossing the desert, but most of us aren’t. While getting other inputs (especially in a partnership) is necessary and valuable, don’t let it dilute what makes you unique. Keep your focus on resonating with your sweet spot clients.

The secret to compelling marketing? Subdue the lizard. Ignore the troll. Avoid the camel.