I sat down to write this blog post today knowing it’s Tuesday and I have a commitment to keep!

The problem is I’m not always inspired!  

I know all the regular topics that my clients want to hear about; how to get more clients, how to price their programs, how to figure out their elevator speech, how to deal with all the technical issues, blah, blah, 

Those are all good topics, and yet they don’t get to the real core of the issue for most of my clients.  

The core has to do with emotions. Ugh. No one wants to talk about this because, hey, you are supposed to look like you have it all together. 

You go to networking groups and dress-up, put on your best smile and talk about your business as though it was highly successful! 

In the privacy of your own home you are in tears, dealing with anxiety, panic attacks and feel like a failure. 

Last week I had a new client share with me that she felt it was dishonest for a business coach to say they can help you get more clients, when in fact they are constantly looking for more clients themselves. 

She expected her coach to not have the same problems she had.

Her comment made me think about this whole issue.  She had already hired me at this point, so I  very quickly  let her know that in fact  I am not as “pure” as she thought!  I wasn’t going to put myself in a postion of pretending I was someone I wasn’t. Of course I have issues!

As it turned out, she decided to stick with me because I was honest. 

Here are a few things I believe to be true.

1. When you own a business, you never stop  facing those core issues around money, rejections, failure, and self-doubt. Never!  

2. You never, ever stop having to do marketing, selling, and bringing in new clients. It doesn’t matter what kind of business who have. One rule of thumb is that it takes a good four months before you see the results of any marketing campaign. So, if you stop doing marketing, you are going to be mighty hungry four to six months down the road. 

3. It isn’t a shameful thing to feel scared or stuck in your business. The times I have had the most issues myself, I am the sharpest in helping my clients. I have blind spots in my own business, but they don’t over-low to my clients, in fact it’s the opposite.  Not sure why, but it’s always been that way. ( It doesn’t mean I don’t offer good service when I feel un-troubled. The logic doesn’t go both ways

If you are feeling stuck, fearful, riddled with self-doubt or confused, this isn’t the problem. The problem is what you do when this happens. Some people hide out, eat junk food,  or do computer games.  This will just make you feel worse.

Here is what I suggest instead:

1.  Take action. It doesn’t matter what as long as you do something constructive from your to-do list.

2.  Find someone to talk to about how you’re feeling. Just in that process, you will shift and realize that just on the other side of the fear, is a feeling of promise, a knowing you are going to make it, a belief that you will be successful.

3. Find someone who can see past your blind spots. This is the best investment for your sanity and for your business. Once you can clearly see what they see, the fears and self-doubts will fade into the background like magic.

Does this make sense to you? Can you relate?  What do you do when you feel stuck?

Recently I attended Midas Camp with Andrea Lee and her wonderful team. 

We had a full day on sales and the sales process as this is an area many of us needed help with!

Most sol-preneurs struggle with sales; not wanting to feel pushy and just uncomfortable about the whole process.

It’s funny because you likely have no problem telling people about something you love!  I  bet you do this all the time, whether you’re talking about your children, pets, a good movie, a restaurant or whatever!  

However it seems to feel challenging to talk to people about your programs, even though you love and feel passionate about them as well!

I suppose it’s because there’s money involved and so it gets all scrambled with your self-worth and all that other  stuff!

Andrea asked each of to spend two minutes talking about something we loved and then at the end, just adding on how we know you would love it too. It was easy in this context,  and then what we learned the next day,  is that this is the exact same energy to use in the sales process.

Just be authentic, not pushy, not manipulative, but real and heartfelt. 

It was amazing and I totally got it!  We each did our two minutes “what I love” video. I actually didn’t know what I was going to say until I was standing there. But here it is!  

By the way- I will be bringing a bit of  my Wainui Beach wildness to the Awake Wild Women Retreat next October.

Manzanita beach is also special and this event will offer you the opportunity to learn how to be more comfortable with sales, money and more!  I’m going to love this event, seeing all the women show up, share and leave feeling so empowered and focused.  I know you will love it too! 

I’m sure that I lost a good two years of business growth just due to making poor money decisions. 

At the time I didn’t see it that way. I saw my low bank account,  a deep fear of incurring more debt, and I didn’t trust my ability to earn real money.  So I made money decisions from that place.

It was a logical decision to be frugal and careful, however but was also a huge mistake. 

I needed to invest wisely into my business and to step into a place of empowerment. Those poor money decisions also kept me financially poor and  kept my business disabled. 

Now I can see it all so clearly, but at the time I was in the mud so all could see was more mud. 

When I woke up I began to search for  the right mentors to help me and it was  as though a ray of light shone into the darkness. I realized that while I was stuck in the mud, the rest of the world was moving and I was being left behind in my scarcity mind-set. 

The last few years I’ve been making up for lost time. I am now mindful of where I spend money, but not operating from a “I can’t afford it”  mentality. 

I knew that in order to shift and grow my  income I need to find joint venture partners and this meant, get off of my bum and go to events where I would meet the right people. 

A few weeks ago I went to Midas camp with Andrea Lee. My friend Kathleen and I drove all the way to Vancouver BC, stayed in the fancy hotel and had a blast. Andrea is an amazing teacher, business woman and a heartfelt person.

I learned so many new empowering things for my business that I hardly know where to begin sharing.

I met tons of amazing people who are part of my tribe. I’m sure some of them will end up being joint venture partners in the future. I came home feeling energized and focused.

All in all I spent over $4,00 if I count the new year long program I signed up for. Will this have a return on investment and be worth it?  As andrea says, “All business is an experiment,” so I don’t have that answer yet. What I do know is that I am more focused now, have huge support, and have even more good stuff to share with you, my clients. 

If you are looking for a way to get this same energy and focus ( and you are a female  come to my Wild Women Entrepreneur Retreat - an exclusive event for  a small group of smart, but wild, women!  Look at the website and then get back to me. 

How is your old story holding you back in your business?

So much of who you are, the decisions you make and how you present yourself has to do with your story. 

I recently had one of those aha moments and uncovered another layer of my story and how its been running the show.

When I was in second grade I had an unfortunate experience with math at school. I was in one of these combined classes on grades two and three. One day my teacher was showing the third graders long division and the rest of us were supposed to be “not watching.”  

Being good, I didn’t watch but but some of my classmates didn’t listen and instead they learned long division and I was left to feel stupid.

I asked to be shown but she just told me to wait until next year. Evidently there were no points given for being good. A could have gleaned many messages from this incident but the one I adapted was that I wasn’t good at math and also not very smart overal. 

That stayed with me and as a result I stayed away from financial stuff, struggled and thought I wasn’t smart enough to make money. 

I’m not sure where I got the idea that it took higher than normal brains to be able to make money but I didn’t think I was smart enough. 

Not feeling smart came from that childhood message. Math was not my best subject in school after that and somehow I thought you couldn’t be smart unless you were good at math. It’s really amazing the twisted beliefs that get adapted at a young age and then the decisions that are made from those places. 

I only share this story as an example.  When I realized what my story had been all those years, I decided to re-write the story. In the new story it talks about a very smart little girl who was in a very low quality elementary school with poor teachers. She was bored and creative but had no outlet for her creativity there, so she learned to daydream and doodle away the hours. As a result she got low grades in math.  

However she grew up and got two masters degrees and got an A in statistics. She took a year of glaze calculation as part of ceramics and got in A in that, and this was before the use of calculators. ( ok- I am that old:) 

As a result of my new story, I realized I was certainly smart enough to run a business and understand the financial part. I also realized that one of my skills is to help other entrepreneurs to understand and change their own story to support their success.

Can you see how there might be a story from your early childhood that is affecting you today?  

What is your own story around being a successful entrepreneur?
What part of your story do you need to let go of?
What’s your new story?

I would love to help you unravel this. Contact me for a free discovery/strategy call

Do you struggle to figure out how to price your programs?  

What makes this so challenging?

It can bring up tons of issues and trying to come up with the right price can be confusing!

For one thing you might feel you don’t have a tangible product you are selling and so its like shooting in the dark.

And then there is that sneaky self-doubt and scarcity mind-set gremlin. He tricks you into under-valuing what you are offering.

From that place you imagine that none of your potential clients will pay over a certain low amount.  You assume that people make decisions based on what they can afford and you assume that all of your potential clients are also in a scarcity place.

Actually  there are many reasons people will make a decisions to buy and most of it is not based on the price. Price only becomes important when buying a commodity product where you can compare apples to apples. In fact, most of  you  are not offering exactly the same thing as someone else. 

For one thing, you are a big reason they choose your program and you, yourself are not duplicatable.

You train your team and then can emulate your system but there is something about you that attracts them. And then, the offering is not exactly the same as anyone else’s. Even if it was, for some reason they have connected with you and if your program fills a strong need they will say yes if you have done a good job articulating this in the marketing messaging as well as the sales process. 

So, the price is only a part of the equation. The other part is your marketing messages. People want to know exactly what and how they will benefit. In other words, they want to know what they are paying for. 

Fair enough!  Anytime I spend over twenty bucks I want to be clear this is something I need. If you are selling a higher priced program people will scrutinize even more and really want to know the take-a-way. 

This very issue came up for me recently. I am getting ready to promote a new ” Wild Women in Business” event next year and  I dropped into this same process. It threw me a bit but I realized it was only my emotions that clouded the issue.

My emotions are triggered by very old  messages that I thought were dead and buried. I can even hear the words of someone talking to me, that make me question my own ability and self-worth. Crazy, as this was so many years ago.  

Once I realized how I was getting de-railed in this way, I did a reality check by asking my mastermind buddies what they would charge for something similar. 

Then I did the following process:

1. I totalled up my expenses for the event and then I added  on another 10% for stuff I might have missed. Expenses include early bird discounts, affiliate payments, rental fees, food, paying team members and credit card fees. 

2. I decided what I want to profit from this event so it would feel like I will be getting the energy in return for energy output.

3. I added up those two numbers to get a total and divided it by my desired number of participants.

4. I then looked around at what other people are charging for something similar to see if I was in the ballpark.  

When I did this there was also the benefit of really looking at the expenses closely ahead of time. I am usually quite sloppy with that part. If I want to earn more money I have to be a better money manager. 

What other questions do you have regarding pricing?

How does this formula help you with your pricing your programs?

It all feels good. Now I am off to do the marketing messages.  The webpage should be up in a week so watch this space. 

In the meantime I am doing a free webinar on May 2nd. The Wise Woman and the Four Money Traps.