Hi everyone. It’s Pat Mussieux here and I’m back with some business-building tips for you.

I’ve been thinking about these over the last few days, and I know that timing is always something that’s on everybody’s mind, so this is perfect timing—as it’s July—for you to give some thought, before we turn the calendar page next week, to growing your business before September. I don’t know about you but, oh my gosh, the days are flying by.

I wanted to give you some of my best tips for getting in the game, particularly if you’re just back from vacation or if you’re taking a bit of time off, or things are feeling slow for you. I wanted to give you some of my best tips—5 top tips—in any industry for growing your business.

1. Go back to your prospect list.

Here’s what I know for sure. Many of you have had bursts of energy and bursts of focus where you work through your prospect list and you make notes, and people say, “No, not now. Never. Not a good time. Child is sick. Husband is unemployed,” whatever the case might be. You’ve heard the stories. We’ve all heard the stories, so I encourage you to go back to your prospect lists, let’s say for the last six months, reactivate it, and take a really good look.

Come up with 50 names and circle the top 10. Take a really good look at that, make a commitment to go back to them, review your notes, and have a conversation. Pick up where you left off. It’s as simple as picking up the phone and saying, “Hey, we haven’t talked in a while, you’ve been on my mind, I wanted to check back with you and see how things are going. How are the kids? How is the husband?” or whatever it was you took in your notes.

Go back to your prospect list. It’s one of the fastest ways to get back in the game and get those calls going again.

2. Have a Christmas in July sale.

We’re heading into the last week of July. Seriously, I think there are some retail outfits that are already doing Christmas specials. Costco is always known for that, so get in the game with Amazon Prime and Costco, and have your own Christmas in July special.

This doesn’t have to be complicated either. Some of you are sitting there saying, “I don’t have anything to sell.” Yes, you do. You could put together an e-book really quickly or you could do an audio.

A lot of people, at this time of year, they’re out walking or they’re traveling, so they’re listening to audios or they’re listening to podcasts, so put together an audio of your top 3 tips, your top 5 tips on ways—depending on your industry—to get people back in the game.

I would do something like The Best 3 Ways to Shift Your Mindset, Get Out of Your Own Way, and Make Money Today. Something like that. Do a quick audio and put it out as a Christmas in July special. Say that normally you would be selling that at $19, and for this month only, this week only, or today only, however you’re going to promote your sale, then put it out there and I would say to charge something really ridiculous, like $5 or $7.

Here’s why you want to do it. You want to make it easy for people to buy; a no excuses approach. You won’t get that “I can’t afford it” feedback. That’s our default, “I can’t afford it.” Five bucks, seven bucks.

Here’s the one thing, though, that will really happen with that approach. You will find out who the buyers are. Whether it’s $5, $55, $5500, people who are interested in what you have to offer, where you have a solution to their pain and you offer a quick audio that they could listen to, and then offer it for $5 or $7, you’re going to find out who those people are who are really in pain, who really want a solution. You’ve taken away all of the excuses and you’ll get some cash flow. So do a Christmas in July special and get the word out there.

Now, do not stop and make time to make a fancy website for all of this and fancy graphics, and lead pages. You don’t need all of that. Give them a link to buy. Click here, buy now, download your audio. Don’t get caught up in all of the copywriting and all of the backend stuff. If you are, get a VA to do that for you.

3. Create and mail postcards.

You might be familiar with my postcards, and darn it, I thought I had one here handy to show you, and I don’t. That’s just not like me. I’ll post the graphic for you.

Create a postcard and do your top 7 tips. What I usually do is 7 Steps to Growing Your Business by Getting Out of Your Own Way. I use these all the time at presentations. I give them to people as bookmarks when I’m selling my books.

Here’s what you can do. Create a postcard, very simple, nice graphic. People keep postcards that have good content on them. Put your 3, 5, or 7 best tips to whatever it is you do, put it in a postcard format, and get it out in the mail. Once you’ve done the mailing, be sure to hop on the phone and get a hold of people, and or Facebook message—however you can reach them if you don’t have the phone number.

Get something in the mail. Get something going that way. Creating the postcards is really easy, and I’ll post a sample graphic here for you.

Number 4 and 5 go hand-in-hand, so listen up here. Listen up really seriously. If you really want to grow your business in July, here are my last two best tips.

4. I want you to commit, between now and August 30th, that you will get into or get back into the habit of starting your day—the first hour of your work day, whatever that is for you, in a revenue-generating activity; revenue-generating mode.

Some of you may have never heard of that term. I see some of my clients on here. I know you have, and so get back into that habit of revenue-generating first thing every day. I assure you that where you do that for 30 days, in the month between now and August, you will absolutely grow your business. You will absolutely generate cash flow. You will absolutely get some hot leads for business.

Between now and August 30th, the first hour of every work day, absolutely focused on revenue-generating activities, and that is not answering email, and that is not just working on copy. It is revenue-generating activities. Get into that.

I know some of you and some of my clients are on here, and you’ve heard me say this. You’ve heard me preach this. It is something that I do, still, every day. I’m working on getting speaking opportunities, I’m working on testimonials, I’m working on getting referrals, I’m writing thank you cards. I’m staying in people’s faces.

Many of you have heard me say this and now you’re sitting back and asking yourself, “Why isn’t my business growing?” It’s because you’re not doing it consistently. You might have dabbled here and there, and have had the results, and then you’ve gone the way of the Dodo bird. You have to be consistent. That’s what a success habit is. It’s consistency, doing what works over and over, rinse and repeat.

If you don’t have the mailing address for the postcard, yes, do a teaser PDF. You can do that. You can post it on your Facebook page. Use social media, but get in the habit, through your website, of having a gift people can download and capturing addresses. There are always ways of finding people’s addresses.

Now the last one is kind of like a two-parter from #4.

5. Get an accountability buddy to do #4 with.

Here’s what I know for sure. We do not keep the power of our own word. We’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, I’m going to do that. Yeah, I’m going to do that.” And you might do it for a little while, and then you fall by the wayside.

Get an accountability buddy. Get someone who’s also seriously interested in growing their business and say, “Hey, let’s commit to this for 30 days, you and I.” So when your hour is finished, check in with each other. What worked? What didn’t work? What are you going to do the next day? If something worked today, then rinse and repeat, obviously.

Don’t over-complicate this. If something didn’t work, then check in with each other and find out what could work.

Get an accountability buddy because, where you will let yourself down, you will not let down your accountability buddy.

Now, the second part to that is attach consequences to it. If your buddy is falling off or you’re falling off, there should be consequences. I don’t know what that means for you. You figure it out, but where there is action or lack of action, there should be a reward and/or a consequence, so you two figure it out, but that’s where numbers 4 and 5 go hand-in-hand.

Those are my Top 5 Tips for Growing Your Business Before September. These are easy. I do them, you can do them, and I know you’ll be amazed by the results. Let me just recap.

1. Review the prospect list that you’ve been working on and go back and call those people. Get back in touch. “I’ve been thinking about you, wondering where you’re at, and how can I support you?”
2. Have a Christmas in July special for $5 or $7. Kind of get people into action and connected with you.
3. Create and mail those postcards that I talked about, and I’ll post the graphic here.
4. Commit between now and August 30th to start your day with an hour of revenue-generating activities. Get that flow going. Action begets action. Success begets success.
5. Get an accountability buddy to hold your feet to the fire, and make sure that you get that done, and then get back to me in September and let me know how it worked for you because I know it works. I know that for sure.

All right, there you go. Those are my 5 best tips. We have a few weeks. Get at it, get going, and let me know how that works for you, and hit share. Everybody we know, right now, is in a state where these 5 tips would be of benefit to them. Help me out, help out your friends, hit the share button, and let me know how that works for you.

I’ll be back again with more business-building tips. Bye for now, everyone.