How To Build A List – How to Build A Buyers List

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Entrepreneurial Profile, and other life lessons… Are you just building a list to have one?

Eleven years ago (or was it 12?) I was gifted by a friend with something that is called a “value profile.”

It was a barely 10-15 minute test, looked innocent enough, but a day or two later the mailman delivered 24 pages of material that was explaining how I was going to fare as an entrepreneur…

I scored a 10 in everything except two skills: having a long range vision and being able to work through others.

Part of that profile gift was that I could go on an interactive telephone conference.

On that phone call I got even clearer about what I was supposed to develop as a capacity… and I have been working on that ever since.

I have gotten much better in working through others, by developing compassion, developing a sense of “there is nothing wrong” when my thinking was too fast and not linear enough for the people I managed or taught.

I still think too fast, and I still make wild leaps that would make me sometimes hard to follow, but now I am willing to go back and explain how someone else can come to the same conclusion as I have.

I also developed a kindness that doesn’t feel justified to give up on people, to call them worthless, stupid, like my mother taught me through her example. And as a result, I am happier and have people who genuinely love me and like me.

Great, you can say, and you are right. The quality of my life more than doubled from that. But my capacity for being a visionary hasn’t changed one iota… and this is what this article is about.

Big picture, long range vision is what gives certainty to actions today, a spring in your step, and a firmness in your voice.

Most importantly: what is the gift that you want to give to people, who are the people that would most need it, even if they don’t know it themselves, and what format are you envisioning of giving that gift so it has the largest impact on them and enriches you the most?

Unless you are clear, you are all over the place, any road will do when you don’t know where you are going… They will all take to nowhere.

Fast forward to today…

I’ve had a breakthrough.

This past Monday we buried Kathy Urschel, the blind, deaf, stroke stricken athlete, who I coached for the past 2 months, maybe 3.

At the luncheon many people came up to me: they wanted to meet Kathy’s webmaster (she told people that I was her webmaster, because that made her feel superior… lol).

Why would they want to meet me, you ask? Weird, right? Except that I was her coach, and I did not tip-toe around her. To me she wasn’t disabled, she was a huge potential asking to be developed.

She didn’t need help in having the courage or determination to get up and get going: she was ambitious and determined.

She didn’t need help telling her story: she told it to whoever was willing to listen, as it turned out, many people got regular hour-long phone calls from her, where she just spoke, and spoke and spoke.

She needed help with the more intricate aspects of being a human being. Forgiveness, gratitude, appreciation, and generosity.

She lacked those, and she didn’t even miss them.

And here comes the answer to your question, why all those people wanted to see me: I had no problems telling her that she was stingy, and that she took people and their kindness for granted.

She was a lot like I was when I had my first value profile done: unkind, unappreciative, looking at people as if they only had use value, and if they didn’t deliver, then they had no value to me at all.

It turns out she called every person on her autodialer to complain about me and gather evidence that I was wrong.

Luckily her brother, Rick Urschel had the gumption to break it to her that I was right.

Darn, story after story… where is this going?

Well, to me, the bottom line is that my job in this world is to help people become their best by holding up a mirror so they can see who they are and how they are, so they can become all they can be.

And the big picture? I am interested in training people who have something valuable to give to the world and are not afraid to work to become wealthy in the process of giving their gift.

That is my big picture. And finally, after 11 or 12 years I have clarity. I know what I am doing. I know where I am going. I know who I surround myself with.

How about you? Why are you building a list? Please share in the comments section.