Have you started to grow your own giant pumpkin?

As a recommendation from my amazing financial advisor, I read "Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money Making Machine" by Mike Michalowicz. As my FA said, the title kind of gives it away but an awesome book for any entrepreneur or self-employed individual even if you're already profitable. I'll touch on that book during my next book post.

As I found many nuggets of wisdom in "Profit First" I decided to read another one of Mike Michalowicz's publications. As the title of this post gives it away, I decided to read "The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field". It's not all about pumpkins - I promise.

The author uses pumpkin farming techniques which grow the biggest pumpkins as examples of what entrepreneurs need to do in order to grown their own businesses into the biggest pumpkins around. In my opinion one of the biggest topics he touches on is cultivating your ideal clients and making sure you're serving them. After identifying your top clients' needs and desires and creating products and services around those ideas you then solve the same for the majority of your clients.

My question to all of my real estate agent and contracting clients (as well as anyone else reading this blog) is - do you do this for your own clients? It goes beyond asking them what you personally can do differently to improve your offering. You need to ask questions around what are their biggest issues with your specific field. This insight can then help you change your offering and services to address these issues. Next, you can then go to the vendors your clients use to change your services to solve even more issues and come up with a very comprehensive offering.

For example, a real estate agent can ask their top clients what frustrates them most about real estate transactions. After getting their client's feedback, the agent can then go to contractors, mortgage lenders, title companies, etc., to find out what their frustrations are. If you can take common themes from the feedback from both your clients and the vendors to help create offerings and processes to limit or completely eliminate some of the issues you uncovered, your clients keep coming back and you'll see your referrals increase from both the clients and the vendors.

The same for contractors. If you ask your top developers what their issues are and then the same with your vendors, you can then come up with specific offerings which set you apart in your specific field! I'm sure there are agents and contractors who are already doing this, but how often are you revisiting this process? Make sure you are constantly revisiting with your clients and vendors for any of the latest issues in your field to ensure you are one of the first to have the solution and you remain the biggest pumpkin.

Do you have any favorite books you would recommend? If so, send them my way! Send me an email to mandy@horizonphotollc.com with your recommendations. I am always looking for a new book to read.

See you soon!

Mandy