I wanted to end this week with a brief message of encouragement for you all.  Sometimes we fall short of what we expect of ourselves. (Yes, even me.) It’s just part of life AND part of business.  As long as you keep moving, though, you’ll make it.

Did you know that Mother Teresa was a great social entrepreneur? In a poem called, “Do It Anyway,” Mother Teresa said:

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, some could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

When you’ve got that dream where you want it, start laying out the steps that will get you there. And lay out NEW steps each step of the way! Goal-setting is a powerful tool for this. Knowing where you’re going also helps keep your eye on the prize. Just remember, Goal Setting is only part of the plan – Goal GETTING is MUCH better.  And if you’re like MOST business builders, moving from setting to getting is NOT easy – having a mentor to guide you is vital to this process.
There are opportunities all around you – all you need to do is take advantage of them.

They may be opportunities to make money, and that may be what you need to do it right now. But there may also be opportunities to meet new people, to learn new things, to help relieve someone’s pain, or to work with that great mentor who is a perfect fit for YOU and your dream.

In the end those are the things that you’ll put in the bank.

In case you guys missed it, here’s my commentary on last week’s blog (Evolve As An Entrepreneur Step 1 of 3 Reveal Yourself). Go ahead and TAKE the risk to let your KEY people KNOW you and help to GROW you.

Hi gang! I’m finally back to work after an amazing week of working with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.  That meant everything from supporting the massive crowd that came to see him, to cleaning the rooms where he and his fellow Buddhist monks would stay.

It got me thinking about service in a BIG way. For those of you who were at my Summit, you know that service is very important to me, and it’s a big part of the success coaching I teach. Help others, it always comes back to you. And we had a rockin’ team of coaches who came to the Summit to do that as well.

I wanted to send our group a link that will give you MANY tools to help you move your business forward. That is MY service to YOU all today.  Go to http://rulesforrenegades.com/resources_full.html and sign up, this will give you access to must have resources, like a Goal Setting Worksheet, a Mastermind Guide, Lead Qualification Roadmap, etc., etc.

This is one of the BEST, no-cost resources I have out there to support you all.  Every once in a while, I’ll send one of these by themselves with an explanation — just to encourage you to be moving forward in a particular arena. But if you are REALLY ready, this is where a boatload of stuff can be found to help you move forward in a big way.

If you ARE ready for REAL success – then I still have three spots available at my Business Acceleration Intensive weekend.

Get details at http://bit.ly/ComafordBAI

To your MASSIVE and IMMEDIATE success!  Christine Comaford

PS: To find out more about my Business Acceleration Program (BAI) and to work with me PERSONALL and get one of the LAST spots left for June, go to http://www.bit.ly/ComafordBAI

The real answer:  Marriott San Francisco Airport Hotel

On April 30 – May 2, I’m hosting my annual 7 Figure Business Summit, and I’ve invited some of the most sought after, wealthiest investors in the country to join us!

These Angels will be representing over $10,000,000 in funds and they want to give this money to worthy entrepreneurs! Join us at the Marriott San Francisco Airport Hotel in Burlingame, CA for the premier business building event of the year.

 http://www.7figurebusinesssummit.com

I’d love to tell you about these friends of mine who will be joining us, but due to confidentiality agreements, I can’t actually name names…

…but I can tell you that we have confirmed investors from:

 * The Golden Gate Angels
 * The Harvard Angels
 * Gates Foundation
 * A3 Alliance
 *  VC Taskforce

(Go ahead and Google any of them…I’ll wait, I promise.)

Plus – one of our Angels is the VP of Global E-commerce at one of the largest companies in the United States.  I can’t reveal where he’s from, but when you find out you’re going to agree — it’s BIG!

Don’t miss your chance to actually pitch your business to $10,000,000!  (That’s a lot of zeros…)

Take the time now to review all the juicy details.  I know once you do, you’ll be making plans to join me on April 30 – May 2.

 http://www.7figurebusinesssummit.com

You’ll find the complete agenda, what you can expect to get out of the weekend, and the surprising LOW COST of an event of this caliber.  You deserve to make this investment  in yourself and your business.  And it *IS* an investment.  This isn’t a weekend vacation in San Francisco…this is a weekend of working *on* your business with ME as your guide – alongside other focused business professionals. And unlike investing in stocks, this one comes stamped with my personal guarantee.

Check it out here:

 http://www.7figurebusinesssummit.com

I can’t wait to see you in San Francisco!

Hi guys! Here’s part 2 of our Positioning Tool Be sure to do the exercise at the bottom to get the most you can out of this.

3. Select your target customers. All too often companies tell me their target customers are anyone who’s willing to buy what they sell. This approach oozes desperation (you’re better than that) and lack of focus (you’re smarter than that). Are you moving your image upstream (to be higher ticket/exclusive) or downstream (to be lower ticket/more accessible)? How does your target market define value? How do they choose among vendors?

4. Factor in current trends. Countless companies are jumping on the environmental/ sustainability bandwagon with “green” products, and alternative energy. What trends are on the way in that you could identify with? Which are on the way out that you should distance from?

5. Formulate your four levels. Your Business Objective drives your Business Strategy which drives your Market Strategy which drives your Positioning Strategy. For instance, if your Business Objective is to have fewer customers who spend more per sale, then your Business Strategy will reflect this in the products or services you will be offering. Your Market Strategy will be where you determine how to find those new customers and how to communicate with them. Your Positioning Strategy will determine the messages you communicate to this new target customer to drive sales of your more costly product line.

If you aren’t happy with your business, or you want to stretch to the next level of revenue, you’re ready to re-position your company. Here are the steps you’ll need to take to get started:

* Determine emerging trends to capitalize on — this will yield your Vision viability assessment;

* Determine core competencies — this will yield your competitive threat assessment;

* Clarify the problem/pain you solve — this will yield your target markets and analysis of them;

* Articulate the benefits/drivers/impacts — this will clarify how your customers buy and who they listen to/are influenced by.

From the above analysis you’ll be able to synthesize your opportunities plus understand the value chains in your target markets. The result of combining these two outcomes will yield your differentiating attributes, which forms your positioning strategy and statement. The net-net of your positioning statement is filling in the following statement:

“For ______________________[customer segment] (which was derived from your target markets), __________________ [product/service] (your vision and offering) is _____________________ [2-3 most important benefits and reasons to buy] (your incentive value chain and core competencies). Because compared to _________________ [primary competitor/alternative], ______________________ [key reasons for differentiation] (these are your differentiating attributes)”

I’m excited to share this tool with you all, and I’m even MORE excited to hear what your positioning statements sound like when you do the exercise. Please feel free to send them to me, and if you haven’t signed up for my CEO Freedom Summit yet, grab your seat now for only $997 (that’s literally a $2,000 discount from full price). http://www.ceofreedomsummit.com/

Christine Comaford, CEO Freedom Fighter

PS: I also have a TOTALLY new course to offer you guys – it’s geared especially to those of you who struggle with getting your business MOVING – and who may face financial or logistical crunches that won’t let you work with me. My new mentoring program, just for you, is called the CEO Freedom Formula. It’s a Monthly Video Mentoring Program and costs only $97/month. I’ll also provide you guys with a free download of my CEO Systems (over 45 of the best business documents, procedures, templates, tutorials and worksheets I’ve ever created or used in my multiple years in business – the systems I INSIST all my top-level private clients use). You can join this monthly mentoring group by getting ONE more bonus, my FREE CD on the “6 SECRETS to Creating More Time, Money, Freedom & FUN In Your Business” Click here and let me help you GET MOVING. http://www.bit.ly/iBmuI

So what’s the deal about branding? You know who you are, and what you stand for. But do your customers? Are you who you were last year? If not, have you communicated how you’ve changed? Many emerging growth companies struggle with the positioning of their firms, and the communication of what they stand for. Without properly communicating your position, the market doesn’t know whether to buy from you, whether you have the know-how they seek, and whether you’ll follow through and meet their needs.

I don’t want to minimalize the challenge of positioning. Heck, we’re repositioning my firm Mighty Ventures right now, and some days it feels like a daunting task. So let’s break it down and simplify the process.  This week’s TGIF tool will cover 2 points to work with this weekend.  On Monday, I’ll send another tool and cover a few more. 

Positioning is the process of distinguishing yourself from competitors in specific ways in order to be the preferred provider for certain market segments. Positioning is the act of designing your company’s offer and image so it occupies a distinct and valued place in the targeted customer’s mind. The main benefit of clear positioning is that it controls how the market perceives you and helps make your products easier to buy.

1. Assess where you are now. If you were to ask a customer, a competitor, and a member of the press, what 3 adjectives would they use to describe your: company, products, overall image? What’s working with your current position? What isn’t? Do you want to change your position in order to increase sales? Secure a new or different customer profile? Revamp your product line? 

2. Determine how you want to be perceived. This is an intentional act. When you determine the specific position you want to occupy in your target customer’s mind, you can then craft your products, marketing messages, image to convey and reinforce this. What are the meaningful differences between you and the competition? Take the time to do this right, as significant expenses will result due to web site, marketing collateral, product packaging and potential redesign and staff training.

That’s it guys. I’ve given you a lot to consider for the next day or two.  On Monday, we’ll talk about selecting your best clients, trending and market strategy.

Christine Comaford, CEO Freedom Fighter

 
PS: I have a TOTALLY new course to offer you guys – it’s geared especially to those of you who struggle with getting your business MOVING – and who may face financial or logistical crunches that won’t let you work with me. My new mentoring program, just for you, is called the CEO Freedom Formula. It’s a Monthly Video Mentoring Program and costs only $97/month. I’ll also provide you guys with a free download of my CEO Systems (over 45 of the best business documents, procedures, templates, tutorials and worksheets I’ve ever created or used in my multiple years in business – the systems I INSIST all my top-level private clients use). You can join this monthly mentoring group by getting ONE more bonus, my FREE CD on the “6 SECRETS to Creating More Time, Money, Freedom & FUN In Your Business”  Click here and let me help you GET MOVING.  http://www.bit.ly/iBmuI

Mets Petits Choux was started by an amazing mother in Quebec, Canada. Pascale Gosselin. Pascale’s product (and passion) is creating frozen, ready-to-eat meals for infants 10 months or older. She has created two product liens, EVOLULU and ACTIGIDOO, which offer tasty prepared meals with a variety of textures and consistencies to facilitate the transition between puréed baby food and junior food.

Quite simply, Pascale wanted to make sure her two young daughters had nutritious meals – no matter how busy she was. “The idea for Mets Petits Choux came to me naturally. I wanted to provide parents with homemade meals for their children, like those my mother made for me,” explained Pascale.

What this mom-entrepreneur keenly believed (and what turned out to be VERY true) is that all parents want healthy, nutritious and tasty food for their children – and more and more simply do not have the time to prepare and provide it. Mets Petits Choux offers balanced meals, made with fresh ingredients of the highest quality, with no preservatives, additives, or trans fats. Natural, homemade, healthy: that’s Mets Petits Choux.

Mets Petits Choux became part of Mighty Ventures family after attending the CEO Freedom Summit in June of 2009. Pascale Gosselin and her new Partner, Johanne Gilbert, company knew long before the actual summit that they needed some serious guidance to create a breakthrough and signed on for one of the few available “hot seats” to present their business model for feedback from the CEO of Mighty Ventures, Christine Comaford. After this event, they joined Business Growth Blueprint to continue Christine’s million-dollar mentoring.

“Our first breakthrough was to suddenly jump from 30 to over 180 more stores of distribution for our products. This major new distribution gave us a lot of visibility, help us with the sales considerably, brought us more partners to work with. At the same time it challenged our production and put us in a situation to have to change our production plant for a bigger one. We are still in negotiation with them but this could lead to sales in even more and really more stores.”

One major goal for the company was that they needed to have more cash to support their imminent growth, more knowledge on how to MANAGE their growth. and more knowledge on how to plan ahead and make sure that their growth continued on and on.

And so, Module 7 of Comaford’s BGB program (Funding Essentials) proved to be the most effective (and the most profitable) module for Mets Petits Choux, as well as Module 5 (Marketing Essentials).

“The Funding Essentials Module help us understand why and how to get financing, how to prepare the right paperwork and the right presentation, where the interest come from for an investor, and how important that step is. We have gained a ton of valuable financial tools and templates, plus how to present ourselves and show the value of our company and raise money.

For the marketing module, we learned about the educative marketing and how to use the web more efficiently. This knowledge now leads most of our marketing decisions. We easily and readily apply these principles every day. This opens up our vision on all the new marketing tools available and provides us also with a nice solution to get people’s attention more efficiently, quicker and cheaper.

Mets Petits Choux is now in TWENTY markets, as well as 180 Metro & IGA stores. They offer a variety of nutritional and delicious products and have an amazing future unfolding faster than anyone could have imagined. Mighty Ventures is proud to be a part of the Mets Petits Choux story of growth and success!

I’ll bet that you read the title of this piece and immediately went into your childhood. You thought about sitting at your kitchen table – or about how you celebrated holidays, etc., etc. All of that is hugely important in who we become and what roads we choose in life. But in the business world, what I really want to know is: Where did you cut your chops. Where did you learn the SOP’s of day-to-day corporate life.

Why does that matter? Well, as a millionaire business mentor, I see all different types of business and entrepreneurs, and in coaching them to find financing and set up needle movers that will really MOVE them, knowing how to report is a huge piece of the puzzle.

I’m lucky. I grew up in the IT world. As creative as IT is, one of it’s more tangible aspects that it usually has is solid reporting. Think about the Bill Gates’ of the world – the Google’s. We’re talking highly accountable teams here. Yes, their people may often come to work in pajamas for all we know (or care), but they can tell you PRECISELY where they are in a project and why it matters to the overall goals of the corporation. If you come from the Fortune 1000 world, you have serious reporting for different reasons. On any given day in THAT world you’re scrutinized by everyone from your investors to Wall Street itself.

What does all this “reporting” mean in the real-world of building your OWN business?  It means supported accountability to financiers. And if you’re not familiar with doing this, it is NOT easy to learn. In the world of speakers, authors, yoga instructors, and anyone else who’s building their empire in a more private type of business, it’s likely that you’re used to low reporting. But you know what low reporting equals? Low Reporting = Low Visibility. It’s hard to show your financiers where the money is.

If you turn that into an X-ray on your operations, you’re also likely to find that your team isn’t great at reporting EITHER. Why? Because you aren’t asking for it. Following that train down the track, the result of this is one thing, and one thing only: STRESS!  You don’t know who on your team is doing what, how far along projects are, how things effect the big picture, and on and on. And it’s easy to be financially BLINDSIDED in that reality.

So now that I’ve thrown back the proverbial curtain – let’s talk about making a few adjustments.  First of all, let everyone on your team know that things are changing. Then, implement a few good rules as you find your way. 1) Have (at least) a once-a-week conference call with ALL team members where you quickly cover ALL projects. This should not be an all-day affair. Just a quick update on status and issues. (You’ll be amazed at how helpful everyone becomes when they know where the hiccups are.)  2) Have a project manager take over the flow of big projects.  Let everyone know that they are accountable to this person – no kidding. 3) You might consider using a project and time management program that everyone on your team can access. One that my team uses regularly is MyClientSpot.com (free trial – gotta love it). 4) Make sure that EVERYONE understands that deadlines aren’t guillotines, but they aren’t jokes either.

This type of systemization will allow for more productivity, more accountability, and more profit.

To your continued success!

Christine Comaford, CEO Freedom Fighter
NY Times Best Selling Author
CEO of Mighty Ventures, Inc.