Warning: This is a long and exciting post!

I have been learning, growing and taking focused action under the mentorship of U.K. marketing guru Bernadette Doyle! I have created my umbrella company, Women’s Breakthroughs, which focuses on empowering women, economically through entrepreneurship, and in their lives by personal development and coaching. So we have two arms:

1. business and

2. life empowerment for women.

The business arm of Women’s Breakthroughs is called Get Clear, Get Known, GET CLIENTS!  GCGKGC was born partly from research findings and partly from my personal experiences! Let me explain:

My experiences: Two failed start-ups and a third one threatening to go belly up! Convinced that entrepreneurship was the only way for me I dug in deep with marketing research and got quality mentoring from world class mentors. Within a few months of working with mentor Bernadette Doyle and her team I have rescued my dream from the clutches of failure and have put things on the right track. I am currently building a network of prospects and business owners, as well as satisfied clients.

My research: I surveyed, interviewed and spoke to hundreds of female small business owners across the world. Thanks to the power of technology I rarely had to leave my desk to do this! The recurring theme when asked their biggest business challenge was: getting a steady stream of clients and avoiding feast-or-famine in their businesses. I target women because my life purpose involves empowering women, and what better way than to empower their businesses?

 This is how Get Clear, Get Known, GET CLIENTS! was born. It was set up to help female small business owners attract a steady stream of clients, the authentic, feminine way. Authentic because I teach my clients to find tools and strategies that honour their values and feel comfortable. Feminine because marketing and sales are traditionally thought of as masculine and aggressive; as compelling people to buy things they normally wouldn’t. Female entrepreneurs typically shy away from acting inauthentically in their businesses. And since they imagine that this is what marketing involves, they avoid it. I have actually come across women business owners who depend largely on word of mouth to grow their businesses. Needless to say, they are not getting many clients.

I therefore help my clients to attract prospects who need what they offer rather than chasing after those who do not. We make use of skills which women have naturally, such as sharing what they know, desiring to help, and networking, to build our client bases. With their attraction plans in place, my clients keep their pipelines full of prospects and therefore prevent the feast-or-famine situation. They are taught prospect conversion and client follow-up skills, to help turn prospects to clients, and to keep clients for longer.

For a short time I was also a member of Ali Brown’s Millionaire Protégé Club, to keep up my abundance mindset. However, I found that Bernadette and her team of mentors were more than able to do the job adequately, and so I stepped out of Ali’s club, but still receive and enjoy her communications regularly.

If you would like to find out more about Bernadette Doyle’s Stepping Up program and Marketing Mastermind Forum you can do so here: http://tinyurl.com/37bxkat

Over the past weekend of May 7^th – 9^th I was at Bernadette’s More Leads, More Clients, More Sales event held at the Heathrow Sheraton. Boy, was it powerful! There were over a hundred entrepreneurs present, with experts from different spheres of entrepreneurship there to share their knowledge, tips, mind shifts and breakthroughs with us! I’ve been taking massive action since I got back and from colleague reports, so has everyone else! In my next post I’ll tell you what actions I’ve been taking. But I’ll share just one of them right now!

I have created a LinkedIn group called Inner Game Client Attraction. It’s for open-minded female entrepreneurs of any race, orientation or creed who could benefit from the international networking and exposure it affords. It is non-location specific, so it’s accessible 24/7. Think of the possible exposure to your business! 45% of people on LinkedIn are decision makers as opposed to 28% on other networks such as Face Book and Twitter. So it’s the place to be! At Inner Game Client Attraction we believe that success is largely an inner game thing, and client-attraction success is no different. We share tips, resources information etc which can help us build a success mindset, inner congruence and the self-assurance it takes to succeed in today’s business world. I have been mentored by some of the best, so you can believe me when I say, without the inner game going right, your business will not reach its full potential. I invite you to join us if you’re a female entrepreneur who wants to soar this year! We already have a growing number of high-achieving women on board. And you can always opt out if you find it is not for you.

Check us out at Inner Game Client Attraction on LinkedIn here:  http://tinyurl.com/33am9an

Check out Bernadette Doyle’s Mastermind forum/Stepping Up program here: http://tinyurl.com/37bxkat

“See” you on the next post. Do take some massive, immediate, productive action in your business meanwhile! I call it MIPA! We learned this from Lewis Howes (author of the LinkedIn Book “LinkedWorking”) over the weekend!

Love and great success,

Oma

P.S. My TEMPORARY website is at http://getcleargetknowngetclients.co.uk. The “real deal” is still under construction. The temp one doesn’t look that good but it has great content already!

For my free eBook “12 Reasons Women Business Owners Struggle to Get Clients” you can sign up for it at my temp website or go straight here: http://tinyurl.com/33yqlcu  In this eBook I compiled 12 of the common reasons I found, that women-owned businesses struggle to get clients. Avoid these 12 mistakes and attract more clients to your business!

Please pass this eBook link to your female entrepreneur friends too!

Here it is once again: http://tinyurl.com/33yqlcu

Thank you!

I know it’s been a long time since I last posted here, and I truly apologise. I have been in some kind of “pupa” stage, rebirthing a new me! You’ll hear all about this with the launch of my new brand, which is nearly ready for launching. Good things take time, you know, and I want to do it right!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you before but I’ve been “Stepping Up” lately. You know the saying that if you do what you’ve always done you will get what you’ve always got? Well, I have embarked on some “newness” and am investing much of my resources in my growth and development. While I have always been active in this way, I have taken things to a new level and have joined a mastermind group, a millionaire mindset club and am working with my own mentor and coach. One of the benefits to you, my readers and clients is that I am now better able to provide the solutions you need. I’ll be revealing to you the names of the mastermind group and millionaire mindset club in a soon-to-be-published post. So if this kind of stepping up interests you, or you’d like to join such inspiring and empowering groups, please watch this space!

The 28 Day Challenge for Brave Women kicked off as planned and I’ve been having a fruitful encounter with the Brave Women who came on board! We’ve had two half-days of personal development and will have 4 weeks of coaching, starting next week. Already my Brave Women are making major shifts. The most notable is that they have all decided to re-work the goals they came with as they have discovered better clarity and focus, after just the 2 workshops! We are excited to see what they achieve by the end of the program. Again, I’ll keep you posted, so keep watching this space!

You may also know that I’m a columnist for the New African Women magazine. Do look out for the next issue which will be hitting the newsstands in April. My column, Make Sense of Your World with Oma Edoja has some nuggets for you, but I’m not allowed to spill the beans! Just look out for the magazine at your nearest WHSmith if you’re in London. You can also sign up for an online version at http://www.africasia.com/subs/ Simply click on the tab below the cover of the New African Woman magazine (there are other mags there) and you’ll be able to sign up.

So this is what I’ve been up to in a nutshell. I look forward to reading what positive shifts you’ve been making too.

Remember, if you want new and better results, you’ve got to do something new and better than you’ve always done. What will this be for you, and when will you get started? There’s no room for procrastination in 2010, atleast that’s how successful people think! So map out your “Stepping Up” strategies if you haven’t already, and get started right away.

*I invite you to share below how you are stepping up in 2010. Your post might encourage someone else to dream big and go for it too!

I thought you’d like to hear about my up-coming community event.

It’s called the 28 Day Challenge for Brave Women!

Previously slated for February 2010, this event will now hold over 4 weeks in the months of March/April.

See flier for more information here.

Got your vision for 2010 nicely outlined? You can access your free lesson at the link below. Enjoy! And of course, share!

http://turnaroundresources.blogspot.com/2010/01/free-resource-specially-for-you.html

1. Generate passive income in your business

Can you create a product or service one time, and get paid for it over and over, even when you aren’t physically present to serve your customers/clients? Examples of this could be licensing a workshop/system/recipe you’ve created, setting up an affiliate scheme where others sell your products/services for you, giving out re-sellers rights so that people pay you for the right to resell your work/creations, packaging and re-selling information in the form of books, e-books, CDs, DVDs etc, franchising, leveraging your efforts by joint-venturing with others so that you gain access to a wider pool of prospects/clients. Think of ways you could create passive income in your kind of business.

2. Set up an on-line store

Setting up such a store means that your customers can buy from you 24/7, 365 days a year, whether you are dead or alive! PayPal makes it very easy. You can just add a PayPal button to your web page, or send your customers a link if you don’t have a website and they can pay you. They don’t need to have a PayPal account to do this. And there are many other sites you could sell from too.

3. Systematize everything

Set up systems and take on board an assistant to follow your systems. I personally prefer a virtual assistant (V.A.) VAs are not physically present as employees but work for you over the phone or internet. So you don’t have employee paperwork and responsibilities. VAs are widely used all over the world, not just by small businesses but also by large corporations. Not only can a V.A. cover for you in your absence, he/she can also take off your hands those time-consuming but low-paying aspects of your work, such as admin and clerical stuff, so that you can concentrate on the higher-paying tasks such as seeing clients.

4. Automate it!

Yet one more solution is to automate as much as you can. Set up auto responders to answer your emails or send out newsletters. Put your product fulfillment on auto-pilot by engaging the services of a fulfillment company. Set up systems to ship orders or deliver downloadable products once customers make their orders. Think of all the ways you can automate in your business.

Being self-employed has its benefits as well as its tough sides. But if not getting paid whenever you aren’t there has been one of your tough sides, I do hope that by now your mind is agog and your creative side a-whirl as you come up with your own solutions.

Care to share with us how you make money in your absence? What’s your experience with VAs, online stores, automation or systematizing? Are you hard-pressed coming up with ideas for passive income? Scroll down and tell us about it! You are welcome to offer suggestions too!