Want to be a Better Leader in the Marketplace? Pt 1 of 5

5 Creative and Profitable Ways You Can Increase Your Marketshare, Positioning and Profitability while Building Future Security in Your Field of Expertise

(By Aaron Schulman – Business, Internet, and Marketing Coach)

Principle # 1 “Pour-in-Rich-out” for greater increase

Do people want fresh, life-giving water or stale, saturated mire when they are seeking your professional or personal advice? With these few creative ideas done consistently, you can:

• easily maintain your peak passion,
• consistently rise to new levels of personal performance and rewards
• stay ahead of your competition, and
• bless the socks off of your prospects, relationships and client base by

applying this age-old yet powerful growth strategy:

Pour-in-Rich-Out (or Pour-in-Pour-Out) to increase your own market value while simultaneously building your client base.

What is the “Pour-in-Rich-Out” principle and what does it mean to Pour-in-Pour-out for greater results? Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake? People who do not pour out with their gifts, talents and abilities can become as dead as the Dead Sea. As the metaphor goes, a person who does not pour out into others becomes too salty to sustain life. Have you ever swallowed saltwater on accident? Perhaps you have had a sore throat and have experienced an accidental gulp of saltwater while gargling and incidentally experienced the gag reflex when this occurred. As these two bodies of saltwater don’t adequately “pour out” they retain too much salt to sustain abundant life and therefore become fairly useless, and at times, harmful or detrimental to others. Likewise, if a person does not consistently (not necessarily constantly) pour into others, either directly or indirectly, he or she can become too “salty” for people to appreciate, and can actually be somewhat caustic.

Investing unselfishly in relationships is like
putting money in the bank.

On the contrary, if a person pours out too much and does not pour in enough, he or she can become deflated or empty, and can offer little growth value to his or her circles of influence. This can be avoided by maintaining a consistent balance. By using the Pour-in-Rich-Out Principle consistently, one will be able to invest in his or her own education and immediately apply and teach it to his or her people group or client base, while investing in them and building esteem and value into the relationship. Investing unselfishly in relationships is like putting money in the bank. By continually adding value into relationships, one is making genuine deposits, much like a savings account.
For example, a business person, sales manager or entrepreneur can read books on business or hire integrity and truth based sales coaching professionals to increase his or her effective knowledge or performance on increasing revenue and profitability. He or she can immediately practice and share these worthwhile principles to others who would appreciate them to multiply the educational investment. If a valid book or resources is sharing information that is common knowledge or public domain, one can easily re-purpose those ideas as long as he or she is honest and give appropriate credit where it is due. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Though there is nothing new under the sun, one’s creativity can design and build endless ways of re-purposing and re-presenting old wisdom in fresh, new and exciting ways and channels that can appeal to otherwise unresponsive relationships.

For example, if you are a life coach, business coach, or another kind of professional mentor, chances are, you read books in your field and associated disciplines in order to keep up on your personal and professional development. Let’s face it, in just about any work or job activity in which you develop some kind of expertise, there is a good chance that you will be a consultant of some kind to someone. In all professions, continued growth is good and necessary. In fact, those who consistently invest in self growth and learn to love the self-investment process, already have a significant advantage over those who can tolerate “business backsliding”, “professional pottering” or the “staleness of status quo”. Just as an athlete has to continue to practice and grow his or her skills to be competitive, a psychologist has to continue studying to be a better counselor and a more valuable resource. Likewise, a medical professional or dentist must enroll in dental ce courses in order to maintain appropriate licensure status. If you view yourself as a professional and you are a professional if you get paid to do what you do while doing an excellent job, whether there are accredited standards for continuing education in your field or not, you can take the high road and be a leader by applying the “Pour-in-Rich-Out” principle. And, at the very heart of this principle is an “others-centered” heart of service. Regardless of the techniques used, fruit will be limited if one does not genuinely develop a heart of service.

on to part 2