Ask and You Shall Succeed: How to Earn What You're Worth

By Zee Worstell and Francine Spinelli

"Ask and You Shall Succeed: How to Earn What You're Worth" asks the reader seven crucial questions that must be answered in order to have a thriving business. The great majority of new businesses in the United States fail within the first five years. There are myriad reasons businesses fail including not connecting with their market, lack of unique differentiation, and inaccurate pricing. But it really comes down to not having thought through the fundamental aspects of starting and maintaining a business in today’s marketplace. This book walks the reader through these questions by using a fictitious entrepreneur who desires to start her own business. The book is user-friendly and interactive, encouraging the reader to mull over how the question asked applies to their own circumstances. Interspersed throughout the book are personal anecdotes from the authors’ experiences that further illustrate the points being made. The book provides food for thought and is a must-read for anyone contemplating entrepreneurship. And these days, who isn’t?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zee Worstell
• Release date: Apr 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311361844

Zee Worstell

Founder and President of AccelerateHER International, Zee Worstell is dedicated and passionate about helping women recognize their own value and the value of their company so they can skyrocket their revenue and their confidence. She has stepped away from her successful recruiting business to focus 100% of her time working with women to teach them her Revenue AccelerateHER System. Women who coach with Zee are able to create remarkable results in their business and lives and that makes it all worth it. Zee has been married to her wonderful husband for 17 years and has two lovely daughters who motivate her everyday to change the statistics surrounding women business owners.One of the more meaningful parts of Zee’s business is the “We’re Worth More Initiative” which she hopes will become a driving force in women’s earning equality.

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Ask and You Shall Succeed

How to Earn What You’re Worth!

By

Zee Worstell

Francine Spinelli

Ask and You Shall Succeed

By Zee Worstell and Francine Spinelli

Copyright 2014 Zee Worstell & Francine Spinelli

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your used only, then please return to your favorite eook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

This book is dedicated to our husbands, who dream of one day being able to retire and live off our book royalties, and to the rest of our families, who supported us and put up with us while we wrote this book. You are our source of inspiration and the reason why we do what we do.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Why Did You Start This Business and Why Does That Matter?

Chapter 2 - What Problem Does Your Business Solve?

Chapter 3 - Who Needs Your Solution?

Chapter 4 - How Do You Do What You Do?

Chapter 5 - Who Else Does What You Do?

Chapter 6 - How Much Should I Charge?

Chapter 7 - What Makes You Unique?

Conclusion - Let’s Wrap It Up!

INTRODUCTION

WE WROTE THIS BOOK FOR YOU!

You picked up this book because you needed a boost. You started your business with hope and promise and so much energy. It just couldn’t be contained! You did all the things they told you to do. You followed your passion. You used personal affirmations and you kept telling yourself that you believed in your vision. You even visualized what it would feel like when you were a huge success. And you went gangbusters…for a while. But there were the unforeseen obstacles. Perhaps it was lack of clients. Perhaps it was lack of funds. Perhaps it was lack of support. But now you are pretty frustrated. And you want to know, What am I doing wrong? And furthermore, How can I fix it so I can succeed? And one more question, Where can I turn for some guidance at this point?

We wrote this book for you.

First and foremost, you started your business to succeed. For those of you reading this introduction, there were probably many other motivations for starting your business as well. Perhaps you want to contribute to your family’s bottom line, you want more flexibility in your life, or maybe you were tired of corporate America and wanted to be your own boss. Whatever the motivation, you started your business because you have a core belief that you could provide a quality product or service to the people who need it. You knew going in that you would have to work hard, and that certainly did not scare you off. And failure was never part of your plan.

But here you are. Your business is not the success you envisioned. You’re still convinced you have the basic components necessary for success, but you need some inspiration…that little spark. You need a better way of doing things. You need a formula for success.

We wrote this book for you.

This book follows what we call our Business AccelerateHER System: Seven Questions for Business Success. Each of the seven questions is associated with an important aspect of running a successful business. Women business owners typically get stuck in one or more of these seven areas, and often, problems in one area have ripple effects into the other areas. By working through these questions one by one in order, you’ll discover what’s holding your business back and what’s standing in your way as you aim for financial success.

These questions can be challenging. This isn’t a Cosmo magazine quiz. You might have to reach down and do some soul searching. You might have to admit that you made some mistakes, and you definitely will have to carve out some time to be by yourself and block everything else out so that you can really focus on this process. But the time spent will be well worth it. Even though it’s hard for us women to admit that we made a mistake and even harder to carve out some time to be by ourselves (we both have children, we get it), we promise you won’t regret it.

Some of you may be thinking, Bring it on! But we know there are others who are saying, I don’t want to follow a new system. I have put so much work into getting my business to where it is now, and I’m exhausted. I just don’t have the energy to rethink all this. For those of you in that camp, understand that this is a pretty typical reaction. But we have a question for you…Do you really want to give up now and settle for this being as good as it gets and spending many more years struggling?

Unfortunately, there is no magic wand you can wave over your business and then Poof! it will magically transform into the business you always dreamed about. If there was, we would want it too.

At no point during this book are we going to tell you that building a business or rebuilding a business is easy.

It’s not, but you can make the decision here and now to take your future into your own hands, and with a little help from our system and a little elbow grease from you, you can create the business you’ve always wanted.

We know how hard it is to start changing what took you so long to build. We had to rework and tinker with our business several times before we got it right. You have to keep in mind that what was done in the past is done. Nothing you can do about that. But you can change what happens going forward. You can take that all-important first step, and open your mind to a new system! And it will feel so good, so revitalizing to both you and your business, to know that you are taking action. You are taking the steps that will lead your business to a brighter future.

In order to help you work through these questions with your business in mind, we would like to introduce you to Meg Martin. She is not a real person but instead is a compilation of many of the women business owners we have worked with in our business development organization. We did not invent anything about Meg except her name. Each problem Meg has was taken directly from one of our clients. Meg’s problems are real.

You will probably see yourself in Meg Martin, because most of the women we work with experience many of these same issues when running their businesses. We hope that you will catch yourself nodding your head and exclaiming Exactly! while reading this book. We hope you have these Aha! moments, because as they say, it’s only when you identify the problem that you can work on the solution. And do we have solutions for you!

Let’s be clear up front. Meg Martin is a bit of a mess. Since we have compiled all of the different problems we see into one person, Meg may have many more problems than you have. But we know the system only works if you go through step by step.

Each chapter is dedicated to one of the seven questions. As you’re reading about Meg and the struggles she is facing, you might recognize a similar problem in your own business. Even if you think you don’t have as severe a problem as Meg in a certain area, we encourage you to stay true to the process and work through each chapter as if you did.

You will discover many wonderful and amazing things about your business that might have been hiding. To get the most out of this book, we suggest that you read each chapter and then go through the questions at the end of the chapter, and answer them for your business. Don’t skip around, and don’t wait to do it all this work once. The questions are developed in a very specific order, and the information from the first question gets layered upon by the information from the second. If you proceed out of order, we cannot promise you will get the same results.

If you go about this step by step, you will get better results because each chapter builds on the ones before it so you will have all the information you need for each chapter to have a deeper meaning. We hope you will use this book as a workbook and jot down thoughts in the margins and then use the blank pages at the end of each chapter to do the work and capture any of those Aha! moments. If you are a big note taker, you might even want to grab a notebook and really do a thorough examination of your business, answering questions and recording thoughts as you read through the chapters.

As you get started, we want to share one bit of wisdom that an artist friend shared that