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Networking and Joint Ventures-Why to Ignore Your Competition

Guest post by: Suzanne Evans

Article Overview: Too many coaches, healers and consultants get caught up comparing themselves to everyone else and worrying about their "competition". In this article, I'll explain why that is a waste of time and outline a better approach to making connections and building your business authentically.

Networking and Joint Ventures-Why to Ignore Your Competition

Something that many coaches, healers and other helping professionals have a hard time wrapping their mind around is the fact that there really is no competition. There just isn't. I don't have any and I don't think about it. Let me explain what I mean...

I'm not a horse race person, but I've seen one or two. All the horses wear blinders. They are little flaps that go beside their eyes. They do that because the minute a horse looks at the horse beside them, it slows down.

In this same way you must run your own race in business. There are a lot of people who are overwhelmed, under-performing, under-implementing, and not doing what they need to do to grow their business because they are so engrossed in all of the newsletters and ezines and emails that are coming through their inbox making them feel "less than" magnificent.

Stop basing your value and your success on what's coming into your inbox. Shut it down, put it in a filter, and go build your business. Go run your own race. Go tell people about your story, share your message, and share your movement.

The minute you begin to compare yourself to others, or you look to others for validation, it will slow you down and the phone will stop ringing.

People always want to know how to start with nothing and go to a booming business with multiple programs and affiliates. People want to know how to get traffic to their site and more people in the door.

The answer that no one wants to hear is that there is no magic pill! The way to build a successful, sustainable business is to start talking to one person, and then you talk to two people, and then you talk to those people about how they can talk to someone.

It's the same basic process whether your focus is online or offline. About 90% of the work I do is virtual, but when you're getting started, consider using what you have in your immediate vicinity. Look to your town or your community. Regardless of where your business is or whether it is primarily online or offline, your approach must be based around connecting with more and more people.

I had a private client once who said, "How do you get joint ventures and affiliate partners?" I said to her, "The same way you make friends."

Approach affiliate opportunities and joint ventures the same way you live your life. Just reach out to people. When you find yourself saying, "Gosh, there's something about that person that resonates for me," connect with them.

So many people try to put more mystery into this than there needs to be. Although it isn't complicated, you do have to put the connection time in. Nothing gets built offline or online unless you take the time, the energy, and the commitment to make connection after connection after connection.

The wonderful quote, "Be more interested than interesting" is relevant to this. The worst thing in the world is to do when making connections or partaking in any kind of marketing activities like social media is to say something like, "Hi, I'm Suzanne! Buy my stuff!" Nobody cares!

You must walk into a business networking, marketing, or social media situation the same way you walk into a real party. Introduce yourself, talk with people, ask people about commonalities.

Walk into every room (or virtual event, or social media) like it's your party. What would you do if it were your party? You would thank people for coming. You would ask them how they are. You would see what you could do for them. You would be more interested than interesting.

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Article Tags: affiliates, authentic marketing, business growth system, coach, coaching, conscious business, entrepreneur, ethical marketing, female entrepreneur, help more people, home based business ideas, how to make money on the internet, how to make quick money, Joint Ventures, JV, Jvs, law of attraction, marketing coaching, marketing mistakes, marketing process, marketing relationship, networking, relationship marketing, relationships, sample business plan, six figure income, small business marketing, small business opportunity, social entrepreneur, solo professional, soloprenenur, starting your own business, Suzanne Evans, target audience, target market



Related Forum Posts
Re: Make Friends...Literally BUILD them! - I agree! Networking is definitely the key word here. What does everyone feel about the different Networking platforms out there? Twitter Facebook LinkedIn what are some others?
Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
Joint Ventures?? - I read this following paragraph in another business forum. Has anyone used joint ventures and had successful results? How do you go about setting up joint ventures? [quote:3vnvuml9]Joint Ventures have been, and always will be one of the most powerful marketing tactics ever, and for good reason. They are easy to set up, and they cost you nothing and if set up correctly will allow you to have more customers than you can handle! So if you promote a great product or service and want to expose it to more prospects, or you you seek ways to increase your sales, but aren't quite sure how to go about it you should definitely consider harnessing the power of Joint Ventures And the best part is that anybody can start using joint ventures to skyrocket their profits. It doesn't matter what you sell, or where you sell it.[/quote:3vnvuml9]
Re: Marketing a company - Get their contacts from someone who had been marketing to them before and do Joint Ventures with the guy
Marketing 2012 - I am interested in what works for you in 2012, Social Networking, Search Engine traffic, Blogs, Articles, Forums, what? This is a quote from a 2009 Topic "Twitter, Social Networking, What is your Method? From my experience, social networking traffic (Twitter included) also converts at a far lower rate than search engine traffic. Evan Is this still true, or do you use something that gives us better returns and conversions


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