Molly Gordon
Molly Gordon, MCC, is a leading figure in business coaching, writer, workshop leader, frequent presenter at live and virtual events worldwide, and an acknowledged expert in niche marketing. Join 12,000 readers of Molly's Authentic Promotion® ezine, and receive a free 31-page guide on effective self promotion.
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Articles by Molly Gordon
June 14, 2007
Has price setting been a prime concern for you recently? If you hesitate to raise your prices because you are afraid your clients will leave, take the issue to inquiry using The Work of Byron Katie. Here is how it can work:
"My clients will leave if I raise my prices." Is that true? If your answ...
June 14, 2007
Do you do your best to provide value to prospective customers but back away from selling to them? Use these selling tips to explore your attitude to selling and make your business and your relationships with your customers healthier.
LOOK MA, NO WHITE SHOES!
The used car salesmen in white shoe...
April 18, 2007
Mommy, Where Does Money Come From?
Ask any five friends where money comes from, and the answers you get may be about as enlightening as a four-year-old's explanation of conception. And if you ask folks in the financial services industry, their answers are about as helpful as the fascinating paper I...
April 18, 2007
Samuel Johnson once characterized a friend's decision to marry as "the triumph of hope over experience." That applies to many approaches to ending scarcity and creating wealth.
Hope is always a story of the future. When you study the law of attraction or try to use the power of positive thinking...
April 18, 2007
If you have, ummm, "issues" related to building wealth, abundance and scarcity, it's likely that you have explored positive thinking, visualization, and the Law of Attraction. If you are getting what you want from applying these principles, you can stop reading now.
(But wait! Please read on and...
April 18, 2007
Ever notice how striving for more can leave you bloated or overextended, depressed, imbalanced, and wondering, "Is this all there is?"
Perhaps this is an occupational hazard of a deep commitment to learning and growth. There is so much to know, so much to experience, so much to accomplish! Trying...
April 18, 2007
If you work for yourself, and are perhaps a teeny weeny bit resistant to selling, this wake up call is for you. It is possible that "learning to sell" -- as opposed to learning how to promote yourself -- is not on your priority list. But, if you truly care about your customers, self promotion deserv...
April 18, 2007
You know how it feels to hang out with your best friend? Pretty nice.
My friend Sara knows me warts and all. I let Sara in whether I feel repulsively needy or shamelessly fabulous. In Sara's presence, my self-regard (or lack thereof) melts like butter in sunshine.
And what does Sara get? My un...
April 16, 2007
Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
HOW TO STOP THE MONEY TUG-OF-WAR
When your self-concept is at odds with how you feel about wealth, it's hard to imagine yourself building aut...
August 31, 2006
Honesty is important in business, and the headlines are full of the consequences when honesty is lacking. In fact, when we read about dishonesty in high places, we can sometimes miss the ways we are dishonest in our "little" businesses, especially the ways in which we are dishonest with ourselves.
...
August 30, 2006
How do you respond to failure?
If you're like most folks, failure comes with negative judgments, and you have a variety of ways to dodge both the judgments and the bad feelings that come with them. You hunker down, often hunching your shoulders, pulling your energy in, and perhaps adopting an apo...
August 29, 2006
Risk is woven in to the fabric of every business venture. So is denial. I've often thought that no one would start a business if they truly understood the risk involved or the choices that would be required in order for them to survive, let alone thrive. Fortunately, every risk and choice in life an...
August 28, 2006
Do you ration the self-care you need to maintain work life balance based on how well you have behaved or performed lately or how much you have left to do? If so, you run the risk of running out of gas in the middle of the night on a deserted highway.
The image is vivid, yet it can still be difficul...
August 25, 2006
Customer service is essential for the success of your business. Yet many small businesses or solo-shops crash and burn because they confuse customer service with customer tyranny. They imagine that serving customers means giving into endless demands.
If you're troubled by customer service issues...
From the Desk of a Business Coach: Transition to Balanced Life - Do You Have Your Instrument Rating?
August 25, 2006
Are you looking for answers in your life or your work? Do you feel that you wouldn't be having the problems you have today if only you had made a better decision yesterday? Are you searching for the tips and techniques that will help you avoid error, achieve more, and enjoy a balanced life?
If y...
August 11, 2006
It seems that most folks I talk to these days want to build their business by word of mouth. That stands to reason. Word of mouth implies maximum acceptance by prospective customers and clients and minimal investment on part of the business. But how on earth do you get word of mouth started?
One...
August 02, 2006
At one time or another, most of us work for a crazy person. Crazy-weird, crazy-psycho, or crazy-ha-ha, just about everyone has a story about a boss whose particular brand of insanity made work a living hell.
How do I define a crazy boss? While there are thousands of ways in which bosses can be c...
July 31, 2006
Should You Discount or Give Your Work Away?
As a business owner you may be surprised to discover how often you are asked to donate your services. This may delight or disconcert you depending on who asks, how often, and how your practice is doing.
In addition to responding to requests for dona...
July 28, 2006
A thriving business needs to grow or it stagnates and may even fail. But what does it mean to grow a healthy business?
First, understand that growing revenues is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of growth. Thinking of growth exclusively in terms of revenue is like dumping fertilizer on a ga...
July 27, 2006
Mood pervades the context in which you do business, coloring the way you work and also the way your clients or customers experience your offers.
Mood is the measure of what is possible. In fact, the English word "mood" stems from the Indo-European root "med," meaning "measure", and is closely al...
July 25, 2006
Attracting prosperity is part art, part science, and part grace. A prosperous business must not only accommodate but support life in all its complexity. A thriving business requires and provides resilience and continuity.
How do you go about building a thriving career or prosperous business? Her...
July 24, 2006
What do you have to believe in order to show up, serve, and prosper as an entrepreneur?
Your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions give shape to the world, ordering the vast quantities of information and overwhelming amount of stimulation you receive every moment. As many self-mastery gurus have ad...
July 21, 2006
It's important to get a handle on mood swings or energy shifts if you want to maintain your work life balance and be successful in business. According to psychologist and researcher Martin Seligman, some folks appear to be hardwired to respond optimistically and hopefully to work life balance upset ...
July 19, 2006
One of the themes that run through my teleclass, Believe! How to Work With Your Beliefs to Grow a Prosperous and Meaningful Business, is the tension between the creative power of thought and resource-depleting habits of wishful thinking. I offer the following 7 Reality Checks to help you reconcile y...
July 18, 2006
As a coach, I know that fear is responsible for much, if not most, frustration and failure. When my clients learn to work with and overcome their fears and anxiety, they step into a world of virtually unlimited possibility and satisfaction. I believe this article will help you understand more about ...
July 17, 2006
Spadework for Your Elevator Speech
An elevator speech is an indispensable tool for promoting your work. What is an elevator speech? It is a sentence or two that you can deliver in the space of an elevator ride that expresses the essence of your unique offer.
Believe it or not, your elevator spe...
July 13, 2006
Do you have the energy to sustain work life balance or do you sometimes suspect that if your dreams came true you would be too tired or scattered to sustain them?
Work life balance is essential if we are to be effective. Without work life balance, we may leak our energy and resources and lose fo...
July 13, 2006
The core premise of authentic self promotion is that showing up, serving, and thriving are interrelated. Promotion, or putting yourself forward, is part of showing up and is essential to having a successful business. Having a successful business is essential to being and sustaining an offer of servi...
June 06, 2006
Setting healthy boundaries is essential for a healthy work life balance. That sounds true, but what does it mean? What do healthy boundaries look like, and how can you know where and how to set them?
I notice a tendency among small business owners and free agents to think of boundaries as ways to ...
June 04, 2006
If you feel that your work life balance is teetering on the edge; isn't it time to make changes before the problems overwhelm you?
Here are my secrets for dealing with overwhelm.
1. Everything is perfect, and there is room for improvement and regaining work life balance. It takes time and energ...
May 31, 2006
My clients and students are surprised and delighted to discover that a refined niche marketing strategy not only attracts significantly more business but also provides richer opportunities for self expression. To help you discern your own market niche, try using "where" and "who" questions like the ...
May 30, 2006
On any given day I generally have more than enough to do. Sometimes I have so much to do that I hardly know where to begin. Yet the fact is that most weeks I work less than 40 hours.
People are always asking me how I get everything done. How do I find the time to read so much? How can I travel an...
May 28, 2006
One of the reasons that professionals resist choosing a market niche is that they confuse niche and offer.
Think of your market niche as the location or domain in which you make your offer.
By contrast, your offer is who you are and what you do. Your niche is where and with whom you do it.
H...
May 19, 2006
Why get a coach? The answer was obvious to me after my eight years as a self employed creator of wearable art. I learned in those years that it was nearly impossible to simultaneously hold a vision, map out a path, walk that path and measure my own progress. I was so often distracted by the apparent...
May 18, 2006
I like working with independent professionals and artists because of the way the work life balance shows itself in our lives - for us, life, work, and business exist in a nexus from which we cannot easily extract our ways of loving, relating, and making meaning. The challenges we face in business in...
May 12, 2006
niche ? 1. A recess in a wall, as for holding a statue. 2. A cranny, hollow, or crevice, as in a rock. 3. A situation or activity specially suited to a person?s abilities or character. 4. Ecol. a. The set of functional relationships of an organism or population to the environment it occupies. b. The...