"You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want." Zig Ziglar
My two friends and mentors Vincent Pugliese of Total Life Freedom and Billy Altman of the Altman Crew helped me with a major breakthrough this month. These two friends of mine are relational in nature. Connecting and generosity are a part of their life. For me connecting and generosity is a mechanical task that I put on a list and cross off. I've been connecting in my cleaning business for the last 18 months as you've heard on this podcast. I've adopted the Zig Ziglar attitude and have made it my aim to help other people get what they want. This has absolutely worked for the growth of my cleaning business. Let me illustrate. Every time I get a phone call or I meet someone at a networking meeting or I have someone ask me a question online, I always look to help them without expecting them to hire me for cleaning.
But I haven't copied my own model in my online business, Smart Cleaning School. Sure, I have this podcast and I help you. Vincent and Billy finally got through to me and showed me that I was being selfish. I was more interested in connecting with people to get them into my sales funnel than to truly change their lives. This acknowledgment hurts.
Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Maybe you've interacted with me and think I'm a huge giver. I appreciate that a lot. But maybe, you've interacted with me and felt like I was selling you something. If that was your experience, I would like to apologize to you over personally. Seriously, send me an email to ken@smartcleaningschool.com and let me know! I think it's easy to fall into the trap of viewing people with dollar signs. That's not right. People are children of God and I have a calling to help as many of my "neighbors" as I can. Do you struggle with viewing your potential clients as dollar signs and parts to your success machine? I ask you to change course now if you do. I want you all (like me) to remember what Zig said decades ago and let it become the selfless anthem of your business life. You see when we help others get what they want our lives are better in so many ways. We increased our friendships and relationships. We increased our influence. We increased on net worth. If you're built relational like Billy and Vincent, you can laugh at this episode. But if your build like me, a task-oriented, mechanical guy, this episode may be just what the doctor ordered.
Therefore, here's my prescription for you! I encourage every single one of you to get yourself out there into the Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Google, newsletters, in-person networking groups, the chamber, and local business partnerships. Look for ways to help others in your community get what they want and give away your expertise for free. Use the "They Ask You Answer" philosophy. You are not holding anything back. You're helping everyone by giving them all the information. Even if it doesn't seem like it's going to work, help other people get what they want. Introduce two people that you know to each other to help both of them. Send a gift or word of encouragement to someone that needs help. If someone was trying to figure something out, even if it's not cleaning-related, go find out the answer and tell them. Help people get what they want. If they need cleaning done, help them get what they want and give them a cleaning. These things will all increase your trust value in the community. Here's the formula. More people helped = Higher trust value = More clients, better clients, higher pain clients.