Quote: "Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future." - Brian Tracy

Sometimes, the signs that it's time to invest in taking your business to go to the next BIG level show up without notice. Take a recent situation, for example. The second call of my Preview Teleseminar Series for last year's workshop was scheduled and I was set to interview two inspiring and motivating solopreneurs on how they use the Client Attraction systems daily to make well into the 6-figures. We had close to a thousand entrepreneurs registered for the call and I was excited to host it.

Then, the unthinkable happened. As instructed, hundreds of people starting showing up 10 minutes early to make sure they would make it onto the line before it was maxed out. As I was greeting them, I kept asking if my two featured guests were on the line. My heart kept sinking further and further into my stomach as I realized neither of them could get on the line as moderators.

Call it a systems glitch, call it a disaster, there was nothing I could do. Emails were going back and forth, with my special guests telling me they were indeed on the line but no one could hear either of them. I would have paid ANYTHING at that moment to be able to get an operator on the line to fix it for me. Anything.

I was crumbling inside, unsure of what to do. Have the call WITHOUT my two featured guests or reschedule it entirely? I chose to go on (perseverance) and asked everyone to hang up and dial in again, and was then able to get ONE of my guests on the moderator line. I interviewed her and it went great. Then, as she hung up to let the other guest onto the moderator line, I got cut off OF MY OWN CALL! I tried several times to get back onto the line and was blocked out for several minutes. (I found out later that Mercury was in retrograde.)

The whole thing unfolded like that scene from the movie Swingers when he leaves those messages, one after the other, sinking deeper and deeper into trouble. Have you seen it? Finally, I got on as a "regular" participant and had to keep the line un-muted for the rest of the call.

As I mentioned, I would have done (and paid) ANYTHING to be able to press a button and get an operator to help me. Throughout this episode, my intuition kept nudging at me saying, "Fabienne, you should have invested in your business and gotten the help you needed BEFORE this happened." But after years of frugally using basic services, I'd gotten too lazy and perhaps too complacent to spring for that PAID bridge line the million-dollar-info-marketers are using.

The good news is, the call ended up being a huge hit. People wrote me to tell me how inspiring it was, how motivated they got as a result and ironically, no one mentioned the technical difficulties. Many people signed up for the workshop as a direct result of that call, and I was thrilled that no one even brought up the snafus. But I learned three MAJOR lessons:

1. Persevere. No situation is ever as bad as YOU think it is. You may be crumbling inside, but in other people's perceptions, it's just another day at the office. Keep going. It will always work itself out.

2. Let others take care of details for you so that you can focus on your "genius work", the stuff that actually makes you mo.ney. You see, Sinatra didn't move his own piano each time he sang at a gig. He had a team in place to handle those details so that he could focus on two things: Singing and Getting More Gigs. And that's what you should be focusing on too: Working With Your Clients and Getting More Clients. Everything else can be delegated.

3. Sometimes, it's time to put the frugal part of you behind and REALLY invest in your business. No more holding back. When it's time to grow, it's also time to take out your wallet and INVEST in making mo.re. I do and I know that this is why I've created so much success in my business and my life. My experience has been that, when I do invest in my business, it always comes back to me at least 4 to 10 times over. And although "money" is usually the excuse I've used for not doing something (and I'm not the only one, you have too!), I've found that if I really look at a situation, I almost always have the resources to invest or can find a way to get them.

Just for the purpose of today's article, I'm adjusting Brian Tracy's quote from above:

"Invest three percent of your income in yourself [and your business] in order to guarantee your future."

Your Assignment:

How will YOU invest in your business this week? Notice what you have NOT taken advantage of because you're using the excuse of "not having enough mo.ney." Using that excuse is an insidious form of self-sabotage. It's a mindset that keeps you playing small and limits your growth. Time to stop being frugal and take action. The mo.ney will naturally show up to help you pay for it (it always does.)

If you can invest in anything, my recommend is to invest first in your Marketing skills, then in your Mindset. If you're looking to attract more clients and get a proven system to do so, then The Client Attraction Home Study System(tm) is what you've been looking for. It's everything you need to know to fill your practice quickly; no matter how long you've been in business. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter (including how to close the sale 97% of the time). So, you do step one of the system, and when you're done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. So easy. That's why my customers have gotten such great results from it. You can get yours at www.TheClientAttractionSystem.com.

(c) 2008 Client Attraction LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Fabienne Fredrickson, The Client Attraction Mentor, is founder of the Client Attraction System(tm), the proven step-by-step program to attract more clients, in record time...guaranteed. To receive your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and receive her weekly how-to articles on attracting more clients, visit www.ClientAttraction.com.

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