Many people believe their role as an entrepreneur should primarily be driven by sales and profits. While your business does need to turn a profit to sustain itself as a business focusing solely on sales is a sure recipe for struggle. Successful entrepreneurs aren’t just all about the numbers and what’s in it for them  – they’re servants as well. They’re known as heart centered entrepreneurs.

By approaching your work with a servant heart, you can fuel even greater success. You can create real value with your business because the only way you succeed is through helping others succeed.

Here are 5 ways to tap into the power of being a heart-centered entrepreneur:

#1. Make a difference.  Motives matter. Motives reflect where our heart is. We all know that dogs can sense fear. How much more can people sense motives of pure selfish gain?  While I’m all about the importance of personal goal setting to help you hit your sale targets, when we’re talking to our audience we need to switch from thinking about our goals and think about making a difference to help them achieve their goals.

Do you have a difference-making mission?  Take a look at which mission statement reflects a heart-centered entrepreneur:

• •   Our mission is to become famous for being the #1 business coach  in the country.   Versus:
• •  Our mission is to change the lives of 1 million entrepreneurs to help them create businesses that give them greater freedom and fulfillment.

Ask yourself, what is the specific difference you want to make?
Are you running a purpose driven business?

#2. Empathize with your audience.  Your audience is your target market. When you are talking to prospects, whether in person or through a blog post, video or speech, you have to push aside trying to “sell” yourself or your services.  As a heart centered entrepreneur push aside thinking about how much you’re trying to win the sale. Instead:

• •  Take a few minutes to really connect with the pain your audience struggles with.
• •  Know what their burning desires are.
• •  What makes them tick?
• •  What keeps them up at night?
• •  What stresses them out?
• •  What challenges are they dealing with on a day-to-day basis?

#3.  Stop selling. Start serving. Do you see your audience as prospects you need to “sell” to or do you see them as people you want to serve?  As a heart centered entrepreneur is everything you say or do serving you more or does it serve them more? What’s the subconscious inner dialogue that runs through your mind?

• •  “I want you to buy this, so I can make more money?” or
• •  “I want to help you stop struggling with _____ so you can enjoy more _____?”

#4. Check your attitude. A true servant heart is someone who is humble. You can only truly serve from a place of humility. Arrogance and pride stifles success.

• •  Think of someone of influence you admire for their humility.
• •  Think of a seemingly “successful” person who is also arrogant and prideful.

Write down what it is these two different influential people say or do that projects humility or arrogance.

#5. Be a blessing. You can be a blessing to people beyond just the business services you provide. As a heart centered entrepreneur you can be a blessing just by a warm smile, a sincere inquiry about how they are doing, active listening when they speak, gestures of thoughtfulness beyond what you normally do anyway as a business service.

Recently, a friend and colleague of mine, named Alan, pointed out an area that I could be a blessing – one that I was actually withholding.  (Ok, I’m still a work in progress!)

He wanted to interview me about my LinkedIn coaching program, so he asked me what led me to decide to create a specific training program around using LinkedIn to attract clients.

I told him my story of how I stumbled upon LinkedIn. I sold my last business to focus on being at home full time with my 3 young children. Luck would have it shortly after I sold my business my husband lost his job. Overnight, we went from both of us working to neither of us working.

That was a period of a lot of stress, worry and anxiety for me. I found myself in an unfamiliar territory, which brought with it the fear of the unknown. In addition to fear and worry, I also had some doubt. I wanted to start another business, but I knew I would have zero marketing budget and with 3 little ones at home I had very little time.

Since I always started with a sizeable start up capital for marketing at my past businesses it made me doubt it was even possible to start a new business with no marketing budget.

After much thought and prayer I decided to find a way, since the alternative (get a job and work for someone else) felt far more suffocating.

During my quest, the one thing I found I could market myself with no money and very little time was on LinkedIn.

What’s interesting to me about the story I just shared is that I’ve never actually shared this part of the story before. I’ve been asked this same question before, but I realized this time I revealed more to the story with Alan because he was my friend first and my colleague second.

(Hmmm, maybe I should treat everyone as friends first …)

Alan then went on to tell me what a tremendous blessing my story was not only to him, but to his audience as well.  The lesson Alan taught me that day was discovering that simply sharing my past pain and challenges and how I got through it was by itself a way I could be a blessing to more people.

Thanks for that lesson Alan!

We all experience trials, setbacks, failures and challenges. So, what’s your story of pain?

QUESTION: How can you turn your adversity into blessing others?
(please share your comments below)

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