It’s always a great exercise to reflect and engage in some positive self-coaching whenever you need a little pep talk.
It’s also a great way to identify some of your superpowers.
And what are superpowers really but part of the unique value combination that only you bring to the table.
Make these a part of your website and marketing message!
By enumerating these special traits and characteristics, not only are you helping paint a portrait of your personal and unique value proposition, it helps attract your ideal clients and weed out the bad ones. It’s a useful way to organically prequalify clients.
As an example, here are some of the things I’m really proud of:
- I have always created my own opportunities. Like when my daughter was a year old and I was ready to get back in the workforce. I was still really young and the job market at the time wasn’t that great. I created my own volunteer opportunity doing admin at a nonprofit family services organization, which allowed me to brush up my existing skills, learn new ones, and gain some more recent references. I treated it just like a job, going in for set hours three days every week for six months, learning everything I could and even helping them improve on some things as well. It was a wonderful experience all the way around and helped me get a really good paying job afterward. Superpowers: Resourcefulness and Ingenuity
- I always pay those who work for me. It’s always been important to me walk my talk and treat those with whom I work with respect. As an industry mentor, I’ve heard far too many stories of colleagues getting stiffed by colleagues or otherwise being devalued. I also remember this one rotten client I had way back in my early days of business. This guy was constantly cheating and not paying those he hired to do something for him, not turning in payroll taxes (both those withheld from employee checks and the employer-paid share), paying employees late, even neglecting to turn over child support monies to the reporting agencies — all while buying himself Harleys, condos and spending lavishly on himself at every whim and depriving himself of nothing. He constantly pled ignorance or oversight, and in my naivete, always wanting to give someone benefit of the doubt, I chose to believe him. After counseling him over and over that employee monies are not his to spend, that he was going to get himself in trouble with the IRS and other agencies, that it was short-sighted to use and abuse the people he engaged to do work for him (and I wasn’t going to lie for him or play scapegoat), I finally had to fire him in complete disgust and contempt. I can’t imagine treating people like this. All my people get paid before I take a dime, and that’s the value I live by. Superpowers: Honor and integrity
These are just a couple of things I’m proud of about myself. By enumerating these superpowers, traits and values I hold dear in my marketing message, it gives my prospective clients and website visitors a picture into my character and better attracts the kind of client with whom I want to work.
By spotlighting the fact that I hold honesty, integrity and respect in high esteem, I’m more likely to attract those kind of clients while organically repelling the ones who don’t fit that criteria.
What about you? What kinds of traits and experiences in your life or business are you most of? What unique superpowers do they translate to? I’d love to hear your stories!
PS: If you need help turning your business website into a marketing machine that gets you clients and consults, check out my guide How to Build a Website that WORKS (GDE-40). This guide gives you a crash course in inbound marketing and business modeling, step-by-step instructions for setting up your site architecture based on my proprietary lead capture and client conversion system, and my proprietary plug-n-play system for articulating your value and creating your unique, compelling, education-based marketing message that gets you more clients and consults.
Danielle
Wow! What an awesome topic of discussion. I really enjoyed your stories and I am proud to know someone like you. You are a good egg as my Granny used to say. 🙂
I think I am most proud of my ability to roll with the punches. Life always throws us curve balls and I have seen many people fall apart at the first sight of one. I may have my moments of wavering, but fairly quickly I recover and keep on moving forward. In my point of view there isn’t any other way to live your life or run your business. Keep on Truckin’!
Oh, I love that about you, Julia! I definitely see that quality in you… your fierce determination. You sink your teeth into something and set about doing it. Wonderful stuff!
Thanks Danielle! 🙂
And thank you, Julia. Being a “good egg” is one of the highest compliments I could ever receive!
Danielle, you are right. It is important to occasionally look back and see the steps and turns that made a person who they are today. I am proud that over the many years I have worked, I had five very different corporate positions that were created for my skills at that time to get a specific new functions started and running. It was fun and gave me a variety of experiences that are helpful today as a VA.
I did not make 10 year goals, I let my work move me in good directions.
What a wonderful testament to your ability and versatility, Kay! Thanks so much for sharing that. 🙂
Beautiful post Danielle. It speaks about your integrity which is a great value. I share that with you. On the other hand I feel indentified with Julia’s comment. I am proud of my determination in life. I am a hard worker. Once I set my goals, I work hard to achieve them. Maybe personal situations that were tough when I was very young, allowed me to shape a strong personality. One of my latest achievements undoubtly is this Virtual Assistance Practice I embraced a couple of years ago. I could see in many people’s face the uncertainty they felt when I told them I wanted to start this business, after more than 20 years as an employee. I had a very good job by that time and they couldn’t understand why I thought that leaving that comfort zone was a good decision. Now those people are surprised to see how much MB Asistencia Virtual has grown. Now when I see their expressions, I think to my inner self “well done Mirna!”
You go, girl! That’s a wonderful accomplishment! Thanks for sharing, Mirna 🙂
Hi Danielle ~ There are two events that hit me in the face that cause me to “pat myself on the back” on occasion. One is professional and the other is not, so I will write of the professional event and try to keep it as brief as possible. I worked for the City of Slidell (in Louisiana – right across the lake from New Orleans) for over 22 years. Living in Slidell since I was 2-years old, I have been through many a hurricane, but nothing compared to Hurricane Katrina. In my capacity as Executive Assistant to the CAO, we oversaw all of the departments , with the exception of the police department and handled the day-to-day operations of the City. I had gained a wealth of knowledge and experience, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to face. With the exception of our Public Operations building, all of other department buildings were under water, including the police department The following day, we had 10 departments and the City Council in one metal building, trying to figure out where to begin. As soon as I walked in, a bunch of employees from all departments came up to me asking what they should do. I took a deep breath, got a situation report, and then hit it. I have NO IDEA where that came from, but I just went with it and directed them, expecting and/or ready to do the mea culpas later. We had employees straggling in who had lost everything, half of our city was underwater, so many homeless citizens, etc. With everything that followed for those initial few months, and then for the following 5 years, the SUPERPOWER I became aware of was definitely resourcefulness. Ingenuity, integrity, loyalty, compassion, to name a few, I was already aware of, but came in handy in dealing with this event and they will be with me in my new business. As well as a subtle sense of humor in trying to diffuse angry and emotional people. For example, when a citizen came in and was notably angry or on the verge of tears, I would look at them and say, “Do you want trailer or trash?” (I handled acquiring the FEMA trailers for employees and citizens and our Admin Secretary handled trash and debris), so together, we were “trailer trash”. LOL That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it! 🙂
Great share, Cindy! I can’t even fathom what you all went through with Katrina. I would add to your list of superpowers “staying tough, taking charge and keeping a sense of humor in the face of adversity.”
I shall do that! 😉 Thank you!!