[ez_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h71fr8lx00&t=1s" width="100%" height="560" autoplay="0" autohide="2" controls="1"] Let me share something with you that will help you move quickly to success in your business, and also apprise you on the increasingly popular customer engagement trends that are de rigueur. I have observed especially in our industry, that people who are coaches, speakers, and writers desire to position themselves as experts in their space and build a business around it but one thing have hindered them, even the ones who are good at what they do

It’s laziness.

I hear a lot of people say... “You know what, I want to find different ways to do things, I want to be able to work smart, I don’t believe in hard work, I believe in smart work” Let me tell you today, smart work does not mean laziness. Smart work doesn't mean avoid hard work. It means your hard work must be smart so you can get great results. I also people asking questions like “Is it possible for me to be able to do this without doing some essential things?”, “Is it possible for me to be able to sell my product without showing up?”, or “Is it possible for me to position myself as an expert without putting in so much effort?” You know what the answer is? It’s NO. I’m going to be very blunt with you so that you can get the result that you need to get. If you want to build a highly profitable business, then you have to work hard. There is no shortcut. Here are things to work hard at...

Work Hard on Personal Growth

You need to put in the effort to acquire knowledge by showing up at those seminars. You need to pick up books and read them consistently. You need to do what you need to do, learn the things that you need to learn to build a successful business. That's a no-brainer, but then some people say “I’m not really a reading person”, yet they want to be successful. You might not like to read but you can get audio books or whatever it is, just ensure to pay the price for knowledge and acquisition of necessary skills.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a place to your strength but sometimes you need to go through certain things to develop the competence required to build a successful business.

The truth is, for you to develop competence in your business there are going to be things you may not enjoy doing but need to do consistently until that thing which is outside your comfort zone comes into your comfort zone where you become more comfortable. It's hard work but you’ve got to put in the work to develop competence and build relationships. You need to keep on building relationships and competence to grow a business.

Work Hard To Acquire More Clients

Acquiring clients is another difficult thing that needs to be done regardless. Today, we celebrate successful business people, some of us who are coaches even talk about them, we quote them, we talk about their journey to success. We tell people it’s good to aspire and it’s good to dream but we don’t talk about how hard it could be to acquire clients. We talk about Richard Branson, but we don’t talk about how he was going to phone booths virtually every day calling business owners, I’m sure he didn’t enjoy that but he did what he needed to do, and the same is required of you and me. We want to acquire clients but we also wish to automate a system that does all the work for us because we don’t want to talk to people, we don’t want to work the numbers. Haven’t you heard about successful people being rejected before they had their breakthrough? That happened because they were working the numbers, doing what they needed to do to get the winning client and that is exactly what you should do too.

Work Hard to Deliver Brilliant Service Consistently

When it comes to delivering quality service too, it is the same, you must work hard to deliver it. When people finally decide to be your client, you still have to work hard to deliver what you promised. And that is again putting in the effort. However, it is okay to look at systems, strategies, and applications to make your work more effective and efficient. That’s smart work but it doesn’t negate the idea of hard work and neither is it a reason for laziness.

Too many of us are looking for shortcuts but there are no shortcuts to success.

There are things that you can do to amplify your work but you can’t eliminate hard work. If you want your dream of building a successful coaching, speaking, writing or consulting business to become a reality, my advice is this – work hard consistently. Please take this advice seriously and make a commitment to yourself to build the business of your dreams and I look forward to being a part of your success story.