The internet is almost magical. 

Think about it…you put up a few pages of text on a website and you have the potential for a business. People can view your site, read your copy and decide if they want to work with you. And blogs make it even more magical. You can easily write more content and your visitors can engage you and create conversation – increasing the possibilities that they might work with you.

Yet while the internet is magical, for many it provides false hope. So many business owners and service providers believe that simply having a website or blog alone will generate more clients. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Launching a blog or website – on its own – may not change your business at all.

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Let’s face it, our economy here in the U.S. is in trouble. As a nation, and as individuals, we’ve out-spent our means and overextended our lives while saving less than ever before in history. And after decades of being inflated, it appears our economy is entering a readjustment period. This isn’t, necessarily, a bad thing. Yes, people will lose jobs, companies will go under and house will foreclose.

Yet if you run a small, independent business, the economy has far less impact on your business than you think. So you’re likely not facing the doomsday that’s being talked about with every newscast and editorial.

Unless you believe you are. But remember, as a service provider, you have much more opportunity in these times than corporations do.

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Yesterday I had an interesting, but short, conversation on Twitter where I said, “The key to a successful small business – find a highly specific, targeted niche and dominate it!” And I meant every word.

I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.

Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.

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Let me guess, when it comes to your small business, you hate selling.

Just the idea of it makes your stomach turn a bit. It seems dishonest and dirty. And you’ve convinced yourself that it’s pretty much unnecessary to sell. Somehow you can get more clients and customers without having to deal with all that selling stuff.

But how? How do you encourage more clients and customers to buy your products and services without selling to them? How can you grow your practice, increase your revenue and grow your small business and be apprehensive to selling what you produce and offer in your small business?

Perhaps you don’t have to be apprehensive to selling. After all, you’re selling all the time.

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Business is not just about what you do.

Yet, as business owners, we spend so much of our time focusing on how to do what we do better. We read, we blog, we train, we attend workshops and conferences, go to events, network and so on. All under the guise that we can gain some edge in how we do what we do.

But what if the edge isn’t in what we do for our clients and customers?

My grandmother buys a new car every four years. And for the past three decades, she’s been buying her cars from the same guy at the same dealership. Is it because the Buicks they sell are somehow better than the Buicks at other dealerships? Or maybe it’s that this specific salesman does his job better than the other salesmen do.

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If you’re an educator, coach, consultant or advisor you usually want one main thing for your clients – that they use your advice.

That only makes sense, right? They’re paying you fees, sometimes large fees, to help them either change something or accomplish something that they just can’t manage on their own. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hired to give advice, as a consultant might do, or be more hands-on in helping with change as a coach might – the desired outcome is still the same.

This sometimes leads to pressure to help our clients get results. A little pressure on the client to change is good. After all, change is seldom easy and often requires a little push to get started (okay, and sometimes a big push).

Yet any good coach or consultant knows that we have to manage our clients and how they progress with a bit of skill. Sometimes we can put it all out there and people get it. Other times we have to pull back a bit and offer change in small steps. So we give each client what they can handle in the way they can implement it best. As I’ve seen it, this is the art to being an effective coach or consultant – and even to being an effective teacher, parent, spouse, or friend really.

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How well can your clients, customers and prospects explain what you do?

This is one of the questions that every business owner needs to be asking themselves all the time.

Too often, we focus so much on developing our business that we forget why we’re developing our business in first place. Sure, we want to make a profit – that goes without saying. Yet the most likely reason any of us got into business is because we believe we have a unique and better approach to solving a people’s problems.

Take a moment and think about all the products you see advertised in mass media. Each one tries to solve a problem. Think about Gatorade, IcyHot or Midol and I’m sure you can tell me what problems each can solve for me – even if you haven’t used the product yourself.

Sure, each of these products have massive marketing budgets, catchy slogans and world-wide mass appeal (what women doesn’t want relief from her symptoms around her period). Yet they’ve also clearly communicated the problems each can solve. And they do it so well that you’d have no problem explaining to someone else that IcyHot can relieve muscle pain.

But what would your clients and customers say about your business? Is it clear what problems you can help them solve? Not just clear to you, but clear to them. And clear enough so they’d have no problem explaining what you do to someone else?

If they don’t know, why would they work with you in the first place? And if your clients can’t explain how you’ve helped them, how can they tell their friends?