The Introvert Entrepreneur by Beth Buelow

Author:Beth Buelow [Buelow, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Content Is King: How Working on and in Your Business Can Be the Same Thing

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

—Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland

Business development is not something set apart from your passion that keeps you from doing what you love. Rather, it enables you to do what you love. For me, being able to reframe sales to “education” makes a big difference in how I approach sharing my message. My sales calls are really prospect or discovery calls. I don’t like thinking of the process in terms of “getting clients.” Instead, my mission is broader and more prospect focused. I’m inviting people to partner with me in changing the way the world sees introversion. I trust that the partnership will bring abundance if I’m providing the right information to the right market while creating clear value.

Offering strategically crafted content to your prospects is one of the most powerful ways you can create value. It doesn’t matter what service or product your business is centered around; your prospects need information to make an educated decision. A creative approach to content can make the difference between a prospect holding you at arm’s length and seeing you as the go-to person for your product or service.

The other benefit for the introvert entrepreneur is that having outstanding content is a way to keep the focus on the message rather than on you. You can express yourself in ways that showcase you at your best. You’re offering high value to a range of people, many times without even having to interact directly with them (thereby saving your energy for the times when it’s required to interact).

How do you get started creating content for your business? When you’re first starting out, there’s a certain amount of spaghetti strategy that we all engage in: You’re throwing things up against the wall and seeing what sticks. You’re probably churning out a lot of content. Much—if not all—of that content is probably free. And you get good feedback and encouragement . . . just not the sales.

This stage is the thrashing stage, where you’re getting just enough positive feedback that you think if you just do more, faster, better, bigger, people will convert to clients. For most introverts, this would be exhausting. It’s a lot of energy out but not a lot coming back at you. What’s missing is strategy and intention behind your content.

Julie Fleming, author of The Reluctant Rainmaker: A Guide for Lawyers Who Hate Selling, was the first person who introduced me to the Cycle of Failure. Here’s how she describes it: “You’re looking at the bills sitting on your desk, and you say, ‘I need clients. I need clients now.’ You start doing all of the activities that you’ve ever heard of that might lead to getting clients. It feels really frantic because you’re trying to do all of this different stuff all at once. And then what happens is absolutely nothing. Then you experience a crisis of confidence.

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