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By Victor Bassey One of the key things I’ve learnt in the process of building my business, working with my clients to build their business and from the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with highly paid experts within and outside Nigeria as I researched this industry is this: Money Always Follows Value. At the heart of everything I do to build my business and teach my private clients to do is the simple principle of creating massive amounts of real value for your audience. More than anything else, that is the key to building high quality market place relationships that provide you with everything you will ever need for success on your path to highly paid expert status. Relationships are the key to virtually everything you need in life. At every point in time, whether you know it or not there’s someone…somewhere…watching you…someone who has what you need to move your life and business to that critical next level. The only thing that will determine just how willing that person is to give you what you need is how much value you are providing to that person and to the market place on a consistent ongoing basis. When I first started out on my own path to highly paid expert status, one of the earliest mentors I had gave me this advice:

“Find people who want what you offer, get them to pay you good money and then deliver huge amounts of value so they’ll keep coming back until their either dead or you’re tired of collecting the money.”

As harsh as that advice might sound, it did make me a modest amount of money. But truth be told, my business didn’t really kick off until I adopted a completely different attitude towards value. What was the attitude? Simply put, like this:

Find all the people you want to do business with, and commit to the idea that you’re not going to wait for money to exchange through hands before you start to deliver value.

STOP!!!

(I suggest you read and re-read that last paragraph a couple of times, to make sure it really, really registers in your mind!!!)

The key to doing this is to think of everyone in your market as a client, whether or not they have bought anything from you or paid you for anything yet. Now notice I used the word client, not the word customer. There’s a critical difference between the two words. The word customer means: One who purchases a commodity or service. The word client means: One who is under the protection of another. If you go out, find your audience, and contribute, guide, counsel, advise and protect them, the people who value what you are doing the most will come to you eager to do business with you on your terms. Speaking of advice, there’s a big difference between giving advice and giving information. What I see most people do is share information, but doing that really doesn’t give you any premium positioning. Information is cheap, all you have to do is Google. Giving advice means that you add meaning, relevance and engagement to information, that’s what really sets you apart. I remember a consultant who got an invitation to one of my programs a few years back but wanted to check me out first. We met at a restaurant and I shared with him my distinctive solution system for becoming a highly paid expert. When I was done he said everything I shared with him was what he’d learned in the MBA program he was taking at Lagos Business School, but he never made the connection between what he learned and how to apply it in his practice as a highly paid expert. Like I said, information is cheap everybody more or less has access to it, but organizing it in a way that is immediately relevant and produces the results needed is a completely different ball game. That’s where you come in, that’s your job as a highly paid expert. When you give good advice, information that is relevant, meaningful and engaging, you provide leadership and clarity for your clients. What you’ve done is create value for your client. The natural reward for that in the market place is money. So how do you apply this in your business? Well, here are two critical ideas for doing just that. 1. Move the free line: Most of the experts I’ve had the privilege of coaching or interviewing at some point express a concern about people stealing their content. As a result they generally don’t share their best content with the public. They reserve that for their paying clients. But here’s the thing, high paying, high value clients, the ones that really make a difference in your business don’t care about content, what they care about is context. Content that is specifically relevant and meaningful to them and their unique circumstances. The good thing is nobody can actually steal context, so do yourself a favour and stop putting out crap. Give quality education and advice to your market place and they will love you for it. 2. Fall in love with your clients and not with your products and services: I’ve said over and over again that people don’t care about your products and services. All they care about are their problems. Falling in love with your clients means that you take time to understand their problems and meet their needs in the market place. It means you put your clients first above even your need for sales and profits. This kind of thinking positions you as a trusted advisor in the minds of your clients. When this happens, your market literally trusts you with their lives and their wallets. That’s it for this week folks. Have a very happy Easter!

About the author: Victor Bassey helps entrepreneurial experts, coaches, consultants, trainers, small/medium scale business owners and corporate executives become commercially smart with the positioning, packaging, promotion and distribution of their knowledge expertise and life experience. Follow him on Twitter @mrvictorbassey