Leverage is a powerful tool. We’ve talked about it at length here. If you missed it, check out SOBCon IS Leverage.
Which is a great definition – and a very abstract one. Let’s make it more immediately applicable for you.
How can you use Leverage, the cornerstone of what SOBCon IS, for your business?
Leverage can be used to get feedback from others – While you’re in person at SOBCon, you can share your troubles with the rest of the people at your table. Don’t worry – they won’t judge you. Chances are, they’re going through the same thing you are – or they just got through what you’re going through. A few years back, I sat at a table with 4 other business owners. We all were struggling to get feedback from our customers. Feedback that we desperately needed to move our businesses forward in a new direction. We talked about survey tools, and the best time to send the survey e-mails, and all sorts of other things about surveys.
We found a solution we all agreed to – and then one person at the table said “What if instead of surveying all our customers, we each agree to call someone else’s 5 best customers and find out what they love (and loathe) about working with the other business owner. Then we can all get honest feedback, not have to worry about our customers feeling like we’re fishing for compliments, and we can all help each other.” And so we did. Instead of a boring e-mail survey, that we all had been delaying for weeks (or in some cases years), we helped each other as soon as the event was over. Simple. Easy. And something I never would have thought to do had I not been at that table.
Leverage can be used to amplify your message and your audience – When you make a friend, you make one more person who might share your work. When you join a community, you get a bunch of people who might share your work. Because SOBCon is such an intimate event, if you want to, you can connect with nearly everyone in attendance, and you can find just the right people to amplify your message and share your work, as well as tons of people who you can share their work, and amplify their message. The collaborative part of SOBCon is one of the most wonderful and amazing parts to me.
Leverage can help you create a better product, something better than you could create by yourself – Everyone has unique talents and skills, and everyone looks at things a little differently than you do. Or maybe it’s just me. I find that
Leverage can be used to test an idea out before you release it to the world – What better test than to work with your peers – and with people who have no idea what you do – all in one? Leverage offers a great way to run an idea past a bunch of people in a short period of time and create your own pre-launch team to gather feedback and make your product or service even better. You might even get a customer or two out of it, like SOBCon alum Jesse Petersen has done with his WordPress design business.
Need more Leverage?
Join us at SOBCon in Chicago, June of 2014. We’ve got Leverage. We are SOBCon.
And if you come, you’ll be Leverage too. You’ll be able to tap into the great minds that have previously gotten Leverage from SOBCon, that are looking to Leverage SOBCon 2014.
SOBCon is Leverage. Leverage is SOBCon.
The only question that remains is are YOU Leverage? Are YOU going to be at SOBCon? Leave a comment and let me know. I can’t WAIT to meet you!
Image courtesy of wikipedia commons
