INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

for Building Your Business The Right-Brain Way

What’s the best way to go about continuing to build your brand and attract, engage, and keep ideal customers?

The first place is to get clear about your core message. Ask yourself, “What am I taking a stand for?” and then start sharing that message. The more you put your message out there, the clearer your message will become and the more you’ll resonate with your right peeps. Then find ways to stay in connection and conversation with your community, whether through a newsletter, hosting events, being active in social media, sharing information or inspiration, or however else you like to provide value. Listen to what your customers need and ask yourself, “How can I be of service?”

You talk about a business’s unique “ecosystem.” Please tell us what that looks like.

Let’s imagine that your business as a flower in full bloom surrounded by the vital elements it needs to flourish. Its strong stem springs up from the fertile ground and its colorful petals expand out as it’s nourished by the sun and water. These different pieces of the flower and its environment make up the key parts of your business ecosystem. The flower’s middle represents your core message or what you stand for. The petals represent the actions that you take to move your business forward. The stem represents your financial goal and the leaves are the prices of the various products and services you offer that add up to your financial goal. The ground represents the nutrients like information, knowledge, and skills that help your business grow. The sun and water are forms of expert and emotional support, respectively. When your flower is healthy and blooming it can attract your perfect customers who are the honeybees that are drawn to your irresistible core message. All of these elements work together to help you have a healthy business.

Creating a sales page versus penning a love letter. We don’t normally see those phrases together. Can you connect the dots for us?

Most creative, heart-centered folks love their craft but loathe the idea of selling. Instead of feeling like you’re hustling or being pushy, look at sales as an invitation to connect authentically with your perfect customers. Use the format of a “love letter” to engage in a heartfelt conversation with the people you most want to help. Let them know what you really want for them, that you understand their pain points, and how what you have to offer will make their lives that much better. A love letter helps you shift from “icky” selling to inspired serving.

New income streams. Everyone wants them, but how does one add planning for that to an overflowing to-do list?

First, make sure that your existing income streams are solid and reliable. Ask yourself what is the simplest and easiest way for you to make money now and do that. Otherwise, if there’s not steady money coming in you’ll be stressed out about your finances while you’re trying to build something new. And that’s what usually adds unnecessary, fear-based tasks to the to-do list. After you have a stable foundation, then you can look at scaling or diversifying your moola-making methods. For example if you provide a service, you can look at ways to package that into products. Or if you make products, find ways to add in services or mass produce your products so you can better leverage your time and resources.

I want to create, not bang out nuts-and-bolts kind of stuff. What’s the best way for a creative to establish infrastructure and procedures to keep operations running smoothly?

Infrastructure and procedures are like recipes for success that you can turn to again and again in your business. Rather than reinventing the wheel each time you start something new, make sure you’re documenting your process (such as product development, customer service, or collecting payment) so that you can repeat it next time, thus saving you time and energy. And why not use your creative license while you’re at it? Make your procedures fun and visual. Draw mindmaps, color code key steps, include pictures.

You talk about how vital it is to make time to pause, reflect, and celebrate. Why is that so important?

When passionate, driven entrepreneurs reach one of their goals they often race on to the next task without pausing to reflect for fear they might miss out on something or fall behind. However, taking time out to assess, rest, and celebrate helps you make necessary adjustments, replenish your creative well, and innovate more. Learn to pace yourself so that you and your business will be around for the long haul. When you take care of yourself, you take care of your business, and in turn you can take better care of your customers.