In this video, I share my 3 Mantras for Business Success in an interview for the ‘Women That Make Things Happen Show’ which includes my favorite: ‘Hide The Medicine In The Meat If You Want More Clients’. 

This month I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a guest on the ‘Women That Make Things Happen Show’ hosted by AnYes Van Rhijn. In the process of sharing with AnYes how I went from being a practicing lawyer in a large international firm to helping lawyers and other professionals to get more clients and increase their profits, I shared my 3 favorite mantras that have helped me build my business.

Watch the video for the full interview but here are the highlights of the mantras I shared:

1. Begin With The End In Mind (Dr. Stephen Covey)

You can’t plan to get where you want to go until you’ve first decided where you want to end up! Start with the end goals and plan backward.

2. To Know and Not To Do Is Really Not To Know (Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming)

It’s really important to develop your business skills as well as your technical skills if you want to have a successful business or practice. But studying new skills (whether it’s the latest marketing techniques or how to understand a cash flow projection) is not the same as putting them into practice. It can be easy to fall into the trap of continually learning the theory of new things, searching for the ‘magic pill’ solution to business success, without ever actually using the skills you have already learned.

You can’t learn to play tennis by just reading a book about it – you have to do it. Business skills are the same. And sometimes you need a coach or mentor to help you put your theory into practice and show you where you’re not quite doing it right….(if you’d like to find out I might be the right coach/mentor to help you then book a no-cost 15min ‘Focus’ Session and we can explore whether there is a good fit).

3. Hide the Medicine In The Meat (Taki Moore)

I first heard this expression from a vet when we tried to give our dog some medicine tablets which she promptly spat out! Following his advice, we hid the tablets in a piece of meat (or quite often cheese, as our dog was cheese-mad) and she swallowed the lot in one go.

Taki Moore (a great business coach) taught me how this expression also applies to marketing your services. You can’t successfully market a service that your ideal client doesn’t know they need or don’t yet want. Instead, you have to show your ideal clients you can give them what they want, even if you know they really need something different or something else in addition.

If you market or promote a service that you know is good for them, but they don’t know they want or need it, then they won’t buy it. So instead hide the ‘medicine’ (what they need) in the ‘meat’ (what they want). That way, they will come to you for what they want but at the same time get what they really need.

For example, I know that most professional advisers (lawyers, accountants, consultants, coaches, architects, etc) need to change their marketing from ‘here I am’ marketing to Education-Based Marketing. But if I try to promote myself as a teaching professional how to do Education-Based Marketing, not many will be interested. This is the medicine they need, but they don’t know they need it. Instead, I need to promote something they do want: to get more clients. So I say I can help them ‘get more clients’ and when they come to me for that result (the meat) I can give them the tools to change their marketing (the medicine) so they can get the result they want.

When it comes to marketing your services, what’s your medicine and what’s your meat?  To discover more about how to use Education-Based Marketing to attract your potential clients with the right ‘meat’ but also give them the medicine they need, read my free guide, “The 3 Biggest Marketing Mistakes Most Solicitors Make and How to Fix Them.”