Episode 41 · May 29, 2022
Who you were vs. who you are
Listen and subscribe
In this episode
I open this one with something I've been sitting with, which is who I was before my son and who I am now, and the fact that both of them are still me. Then a coaching call with a client asking a version of the same question about her business. She's done a remarkable range of work and can't see how any of it fits together, so she keeps selling whichever tactic people are asking for. At the end I give her the exact phrase I give clients when their whole career feels like it stopped counting.
What you'll take away
- The problem you solve is the niche. Not copywriting, not blog posts. She kept looking at the pieces of a launch and calling those the niche. The launch was the niche.
- Ask for a tactic and the price comes down with it. Three blog posts a month is worth whatever three blog posts are worth. Taking a product from a sketch and a recipe to the shelf is worth something else.
- Selling what people post about keeps you in execution. People post the tactic they think they need, so position yourself for that and you'll be delivering it for as long as you do this.
- She'd launched company after company and filed it under not knowing how to scale. We spend so long noticing our clients' wins that we stop noticing our own.
- The old you and the new you are the same you. Here's the phrase I use: all the stuff I did before is how I know how important this work is. None of it evaporated when you left.
In this conversation
The full transcript, in sections. Open any one to read it.
The me before, and the me now
0:02
Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their B2B, consulting, coaching and service based businesses. But I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more. If you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate this podcast. Review it and share it. Thanks.
Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for joining me in this episode, wherever you are, wherever you're tuning in, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business, and also taking some time for you. So I want to get a little personal here. Okay, so let's be honest. I get personal with you guys in pretty much every episode, but this one feels particularly, I don't know, vulnerable, so I've been sort of sitting with thinking about having feelings about me now versus the old me, you know, like the way I used to be before I had my son, who's about two and a half. So this is a moment where I have to drop in the mom disclaimer, right? The mom disclaimer goes something like this, I love my son. I love him so much. I love being his mom, right? He brings me so much joy, and I could never imagine my life without him, but I also loved me and my life and the way I was before he was born. I know a lot of moms out there can relate. So he's two and a half now almost three, and I think really only now it started to sink in, like all the ways that motherhood has not only changed me, but changed my entire life, right? Like, completely and irreversibly changed me and changed my life. There's a woman, Dr Alexandra Sachs, who calls this period matrices. You know, there's adolescence, when you go from being a child to being an adult, but instead, it's matrices, which is defined as the physical, emotional and social transition to becoming a mother. And just like adolescence, it's, you know, new and exciting, but it's also awkward and uncomfortable, and things don't fit anymore, right? And I don't know, maybe other parents come to terms with this a lot earlier. I don't really know, but since I've been a mom, well, the first six months are kind of a blur, but then we went into lockdown for the pandemic, and I was a new mom with a six month old in a global viral outbreak. And then, you know, the pandemic like, keeps going and keeps going. And in that time, I don't really think I had the ability to process, you know, who I am now versus who I was before, because honestly, there was just so much else to deal with and process. There was an election and an insurrection, and we lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg and George Floyd and ahmaud arbery and Brianna Taylor and, you know, wildfires and Ukraine. I mean, there's been a lot of processing, but it hasn't necessarily been about this. And now, you know, life seems to be sort of looking up a bit, you know, knock on wood. But I think the pandemic has forced a lot of us to evaluate how we were before and how we want to be now. So I feel like my own process of reconciling who I am now versus who I was before my son is kind of just happening now, and I felt this really strong need to reconnect with some parts of my life that were from the old me right, like my old life. And I have been thinking about this a lot, but I think what's prompting it right now, it sort of feels very present right now is that a few weeks ago, I went to my 20th college reunion. That's right, I'm 42 and I went down to Philadelphia, to the University of Pennsylvania for my reunion. And I mean, talk about reconnecting with who you were before, you know, I got to hang out with friends that I've known and who have known me since, in some cases, like, 24 years, you know, since I was a freshman, and that was really, really nice to, you know, reconnect with that part of me. I mean, there were definitely also some, like, WTF moments, like, I saw a guy from My freshman hall who is now this huge neurosurgeon, and all I can think of was, I've seen you throw up in your shoes, right? So you. Know, everybody grows up, I guess so that weekend was just a really nice way to just, I don't know, make contact with an old part of me. But there are other things too, like, I've been super into the music I used to listen to. Now, if you've ever worked with me, you know that I basically only listened to music from the 90s and early 2000s but I'd have to say I haven't been super into music, even my own music, for, I don't know, the past 10 years or so, but now I can't get enough of it. So I have a station that's all 90s rock, right, like Pearl Jam and Allison chains and Nirvana and Soundgarden. I've got a station that's like, I don't know how you describe it, like Counting Crows, Rem blues, traveler, Dave Matthews, and I've got a station, of course, that's based on ani DeFranco. So it's like ani Alanis, Morissette, Tracy Chapman, Sarah McLachlan, like all of these channels are on repeat in a way that, like, I just can't get enough of it, like I crave it. And also, another thing that I did recently was my wife and I got one of those digital frames. It's called the aura, and, you know, it's like, where you can upload photos from your phone, and it kind of cycles through all the photos. So we got one of those, and we filled it with photos of us from before, but we also have a lot of photos of our son on our phones and, you know, various places. So most of the photos on this frame are of us from when we first started dating or early in our relationship and our wedding, and the trips we've taken, and as it sits on our bookshelf and sort of cycles through those moments of our lives from before. It's a really nice way to reconnect with, you know, just us and again. Mom, disclaimer, right? I love my son, I love my life, but this reconciling of before and after is real. I mean, maybe you're experiencing something like this too, you know maybe for you, it's about motherhood, or maybe it's about the pandemic before and now, so you know, wherever you are in this or if you've experienced something like this in your past, I just want to say, Thanks for holding space for me. Thanks for letting me share it with you. I mean, what's a little therapy between friends, right? But it's also been on my mind as I was editing this week's episode, because, in a way, it's something that the client who I'm talking to, she's going through also, but she's going through it in her consulting business, and she's trying to answer a few big questions, like, how do I take all the things I've done in the past in my career and my successes, and how do I reconcile them into what I want to do now? And how do I give them a home and a purpose and a reason for existing in what I'm doing now? And of course, you know, how do I get more of that so I can do work that I love, that lights me up, and that's the subject of the conversation that you're going to listen in on today. And I think it's really universal, because I hear some version of this question from a lot of the women I talk to. So I'm really excited to share this conversation with you. The woman I'm talking to here is a consultant to startups, and she's had an incredible range of experience, as you're going to hear her describe. So two things to know as you listen to this episode. The first is she's worked with a handful of people and projects that she mentions by name, so we're just going to go ahead and bleep those out. And the second thing is that included in her wide range of experience is that she also started her own beverage company. So little data point there, because you're going to hear it come up later in the episode. All right, so let's dive in. I want to send a huge thank you to this client for allowing me to share this conversation with you. Take a listen, and I'll come back at the end with a lesson that you can apply to your business.
Do you have an actual sales process? I'm talking about not a general sense of what you should be doing, but a real process where you know exactly what step comes next, who to follow up with and when. And you can see at a glance where every potential client stands, if the answer is no, or if yours feels clunky, or you're reinventing the wheel every single time I made something for you, it's called roadmap to clients. It's a free 20 minute video course, and in it you'll map out your customized sales process, step by step, from the very first contact with a potential client all the way to a signed proposal. It's the same foundational process we use with every Academy member, and it's completely free. Go to smart gets paid.com/roadmap to get started.
Mexico, an accelerator, and eight years of freelancing
9:37
Hey, how's it going good? How are you good? It's fun to be reconnecting after all these years.
I know it's been forever, and you've been on quite a journey since then.
Yeah, I moved to Mexico, kind of as director of an accelerator that sounded too good to be true. It was I got there. It was a mess. The my boss was like a compulsive liar. I met five people who had worked for him quit because I never got paid at Sunday. God, all within the first, like five weeks. I also met my now husband my third week there. So I had, like, a different motivation for staying
so pros and cons, uh huh,
and then, because that Job was going to shit. I kind of reached out to some of the people I had been working for in New York, and I was like, oh, like, I'm available again, but I'm in Mexico. I was technically always a freelancer with them, and I kind of just, like, in Mexico, the cost of living was pretty low, so I was never too concerned about how much I was charging. And I also, like, didn't have anybody to guide what the prices should look like. And now that I'm back, I'm like, Okay, I've been doing this for eight years. I should start learning how to do it properly and treat it like the business that it is, and also get some guidance on how to do it well. Well, because
now that you're living in the US paying us prices, yep, money is a little more important. I remember feeling that when the first business I started was when I was a digital nomad, and we were living in a lot of different places, but most of them had cost of living that were less than the US, you know, far below the US. And then when I got back on US soil, I was like, oh shit, you know, yeah, really have to do
Good at a great many things, narrowed to none of them
11:20
this, and I don't even know, like, what appropriate pricing is. I've figured out the range is so wide, and also my experience is so varied, and I need to start focusing in on what I do, but then I also get a little bit nervous about what I'm excluding when I do that. When I was still in New York, I started positioning myself as kind of founders best friends, like worked with solo entrepreneurs, or people who are just starting out to kind of be their right hand and do everything. A lot of that involved communications, but I didn't think of myself as a marketing or person. And then since I've been abroad, I've, like my freelancing digs have repeatedly been people who were kind of starting or the head of, like a three person team maximum, helping them through the process of launching, and then, as a direct result, also doing everything on the communications and marketing front that goes along with Mark with launching. And I guess a year and a half ago, for the first time, I took a freelancing job that was supposed to be strictly content and copywriting, like doing newsletters and blog posts, and I realized I really liked it. And in the last couple of years, I guess I realized I really love copywriting and I love content, so I kind of see that as a niche to focus on. But I also love the process of helping brands develop themselves. Like right now, my current project has been doing the branding for these new bars, and just like, literally, from start to finish, everything from the name to the what is written on the wrapper, what the wrapper looks like, like what's on the website, what's in the email funnels. So yeah, I guess currently my crisis is like trying to figure out the balance between just doing copywriting, which I think could be a nice and easy thing to sell, and also kind of is a self contained thing, like, Okay, I'm going to do copywriting for these pages for your website, and then the project's done, versus What I've been doing, which is more like I usually work with people from anywhere from nine months to four years on an ongoing basis, because I'll end up in roles where I'm doing their weekly newsletters and not just like stuff that gets done and then is finished. And I think those roles have been nice because they've been so stable, and it means I haven't spent any time looking for new clients. But I also think in terms of having more control over my time like they tends to treat me more like an employee, like a part time employee. And I would love to find a balance where maybe I have one role like that, but then have the rest be more like I'm gonna do this two week project, or even this two month project, and it's done and I'm gonna get paid, and then it's gonna be over with. Sorry, I'm like, word vomiting at you. I'm just, like, trying to give you as much context as possible. No, I love it. My other question is, working as a solo entrepreneur or a standalone person, versus as a team? Over the years, I've done a lot of project management work where I'll bring in a designer, I'll bring in a second copywriter to do the social media, etc, and I end up, in addition to doing whatever is my core piece, newsletters, blog posts, I'll be managing the social media per se, and managing the designer, managing the web design. So right now, I'm starting a project where I kind of pitched myself as a little digital marketing agency, and I'm not sure this is the direction I want to go. It's just a possible hat I'm trying on to try and see if I'd rather just focus on the thing that I do and do well and have full control over and not worry about other people, or if having the full package allows. Me a pitch for bigger projects and help them get paid more, and help myself get paid more. And I think the last two things that I'm thinking about, I have shifted to doing more e commerce stuff, and I really feel like I miss working in the impact space, especially with like sustainability, climate change. But I kind of have this idea that those clients don't exist in a in a way where they'd be willing to pay like I feel like companies that are doing cool stuff in the sustainability climate change front that excite me that those places aren't willing to pay more than like 50 bucks an hour for somebody to do that. And I don't know if that's true or just based on my own experience, because my worst paying customers or clients were always like, the impact bleeding heart ones. Anything else?
Doing and guiding, split in two
15:51
Last thing, trying to think about, while I think about wanting to have a niche, but also not wanting to limit like, if I'm doing copywriting for somebody, and I see that they haven't done the work to like prove that there's a market. I can't resist the urge to insert myself and suggest that they do experiments or help with the strategy. And so I guess lately, I've also been thinking about what it would look like if I divided my work into two things, one which is doing and one which is guiding. And kind of had my core freelance projects would be actually the execution stuff like copywriting for websites or helping a brand go through a process of developing their voice and then having maybe a once a year or twice a year like coaching or program like one of my clients in the last year who is actually one of my best paying clients. So it's interesting to see how different people like decide that your rate is okay or not. She's just like incredible woman, and she's I've just been kind of doing weekly calls with her, coaching her, like helping her make the decisions. I think my rate is too high for her to engage me and actually getting stuff done, but we'll have these phone calls and I'll help her decide how to move forward with something, or just kind of help her navigate what's next. So that's kind of poked the idea in my brain that, oh, like, I really like the process that we're going through. I also see that my price is a limiting factor in her not having me actually do the work, but that she sees value in these coaching feedback calls. So that's like my 360 I guess,
yeah, well, I can certainly see that. You know, with all of these sort of swimming around in your head, it's hard to come up with the question or the answers to all these questions on your own, especially since they're all so closely tied together, you know, what do I do? What do I charge for it? Who am I actually working with? What about the people I want to work with? Can they afford me? But what if I only do this for them? You know, like it's, it's a lot, it's a lot to sort of sift through. Let's, I made some notes. So let's just sort of go down the list, I think that you know. So what, what I'm hearing is that you've taken on a lot of projects, a lot of different kinds of projects. You have a lot of great experience, and now it's sort of like, well, what do I want to do? Should I be doing the copywriting? Should I be doing this strategy? Should I just be doing coaching? Right? And, and you've applied this, what you've done to different kinds of companies, right? CPG, companies, impact space, probably others as well, right? I think that it's really hard to sort of answer this question. If the question is, what do I want to do? What are the tactics I want to be doing? Do I do want to do copywriting? Do I want to, like, you know, do strategy, that sort of thing. So I want to sort of take a step back and some of the work that we're also going to do next week is, what is the problem you want to be solving? Like, why do you like the copywriting piece and the content creation and making sure that somebody's brand voice comes through? And you know, so why you love that from from the perspective of the client, right? What is the problem for the client that this work solves?
What problem do you want to solve?
19:08
I guess it just helps them present themselves to the world as themselves. But on the other hand, it's, it's what makes or breaks a sale copy. I don't think a lot of people get that, but copy is a huge factor in whether or not somebody is going to buy what you're selling, even whether they understand what you're selling. And it comes down to copy, and whether you sound like a sleazy salesperson or like just a normal person, affects how people perceive it. It's funny because I almost feel like I'm at war with myself, that I constantly downplay the importance of copywriting like I never I didn't go to college thinking, do I want to be a copywriter? And there's nothing wrong with copywriting, but I'm like, Oh no. Like I'm a strategy person, but when I have to sit down to do work, copywriting flows out of me, and when I look at websites, I'm constantly. Ly criticizing and like, oh, that's what I would do different. If I pick up a product, I immediately either respect the copy, like, it's what I judge all the time, so it's like, such an integral part that either converts or doesn't, yeah,
Anything can be sold, so start from the problem
20:15
although, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily do copywriting, because you think it's a thing that people will buy, and they, you think it's thing people need, because you can sell anything, any service can be sold. You know, I know of a woman who she runs endurance races, and she sells a program where she will train you, you know, help you train to do these epic, epic races, and she will pace you on the race. Okay? So she'll, like, run with you when you run 100 miles, and that program is, like, $10,000 you know, I'm sure at some point she was like, Is anyone gonna buy this? But she's made a huge business out of it. So anything can sell the problem. What's gonna really anchor what you do and how you do it is, what is the problem you want to be solving, right? Like you the problem you want to solve, and who do you want to be solving it for? I don't believe that there is, you know, working with these products that are launching and working with the impact space. I don't believe that those are mutually exclusive, right? You just showed me a granola bar. I'm sure there's some sort of like impact or mission, at the core of this company that's making this granola bar, right? So I don't believe that you have to make this huge choice, but you know, so the problem you want to be solving maybe it is, you know, making sure that companies that launch something, you know, they make the best possible first impression that drives sales, right? I mean, that's just, I'm sort of like spitballing it, right? But like people who come to you and they're like, I need three blog posts a month, right? You can do three blog posts a month, but when somebody comes to you asking for a tactic, it drives your price down. It's very hard to be seen as a strategic partner, you know, but if somebody comes to you and says, Listen, we're about to launch this cold brew, and we have to get it right, because this is a really crowded space, that's the problem that you can then bring all of your skills to bear, right? It will require some strategy, it'll require some copywriting, it will probably ad buyer require some coaching. And I'm not saying this in terms of, like, put all your services together to sell the most, right? It's, I'm not, sort of not going tactics first. That's why we do a problem first.
That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I like this. I like this. And then I guess I'm not sure how to package it. And that's kind of where my breakdown is. Like, I hear people talking like, like, for example, this is, it's like an adaptogenic nut butter bar. He was talking about wanting to do it, but not knowing where to start. And like, Oh, this is what you have to do that. And then, now it exists. I'm not the founder. I'm just the person behind the brand.
Well, I mean, yeah, she came to you and was like, we want to do this. We don't know how to launch it. You know how to launch it, right, right?
And I wouldn't, oh, sorry. I realized I it's like with my company, I realized I don't know how to scale it. I know how to launch it, like we got through the first three years, selling the brand's great had good reception as a company. I don't know how to make it particularly profitable. I don't know how to do the distributor relationships when it comes to building the business. That's not what I'm experienced with. Like, I can launch stuff in my sleep, but
"I must not be that good at it"
23:35
okay, but I just want to sort of repeat back to you what you said. I took a I took something that was just an idea, and I got it produced, I got it branded, I got it out, I got it marketed, I launched something I made something happen. But I must not be that good at it, because I don't know how to scale it from here, right? That's sort of like the implicit thing. But first of all, bringing it to life is is huge, and that is a problem that a lot of people have. You don't have to be the one who brings it to life and scales it. There's this whole idea of the CEO who launches is not the same thing as a CEO who scales. So don't discount the incredible experience you have.
But I mean, technically, I was for, I was partner on paper. Even though the dynamic was definitely more of a boss. She had the idea. I helped her launch it. At that point, I was positioning myself as founder's best friend. He had already started, but he had just done the Kickstarter when I start, teamed up with him for he was also at the Kickstarter phase when I joined him to get it out the door. Every client I've worked with has been about starting something, whether it's a new company or a new project within the company. Like this is amazing. It's amazing. I mean, I can't even give an example, like even with. With this company. It's a 15 year old company that makes granola bars, and my project was starting the new brand under the parent company to do a new type
The problem you solve is the niche
25:09
of product. I mean, this is an incredible set of experiences. And do you see how it's it's so much bigger than copywriting. Sure, copywriting was a part of it. You can't launch a brand without copy, but the problem that you're solving is something around, you know, you know, companies take ideas, bring ideas into the marketplace, and, look, I've done this 12 times. When you can position it like that, when you know around the problem you solve, the value you provide, that's how you can start to get creative about how you package your services. You can charge a lot more, right? Because what is the value of three blog posts? I don't know, right? But what is the value of taking a brand from, you know, a sketch and a recipe to the shelf. That's huge. Okay, I want to, because you're such a self starter, it's so easy to go from problem to but I don't know how to package it, right? That's where you just went a few minutes ago.
Sit right now and see it as a niche. I didn't see the launch thing as a niche. I saw all the things that go into the launch as the niches. So I think
the mindset shift is, the problem that you solve is a niche, so the problem that you solve is a niche. And when you can say, I think what's, what's sort of scary about that is, so far you've been responding to people who come to you, you know, what do you need? They say, I need this. And you're like, I can do that, or I need that. And, you know, yeah, I can do that too. When you can really carve out this problem, the problem that I solve is this, right? And you sort of plant your flag, just like, plant your flag, then you can start to attract people who have that problem, not the people who say, I need three blog posts, right? But people who say, I don't know how to get this product to market. Yep. Okay, you know, I think that, because this is, this might be the first time you're sort of being proactive about this, it can feel scary because you don't know when the next launch project is going to come. The next launch project might be or the next project might be something totally different. The next project might post
like, oh, looking for launch support. People post like, oh, I need a copywriter. Oh, I need a designer, or I need a web
The people who need three blog posts aren't your people
27:34
builder, possibly. But if you want to really be intentional about, you know, building this sort of this business, the people who just need three blog posts are not your people anymore, and that might take a little bit, you know, you also sort of do that in the discovery. If somebody gets on the phone with you and you're like, I need three blog posts, how much are three blog posts? And you're like, Well, I help companies launch so we are not a fit, yeah, I feel like you're like, has it's helped, is it? Is it?
Yeah, it's actually like, coming, like, full circle, because I think maybe a year ago, or, I don't know, the last time, at one point I was like, how am I communicating what I do? And I positioned it as I help people start, I help people and companies start, projects, brands and companies. And then I started steering away from that in the course of 2020 because, like, I was like, oh shit. Like, I just like, need to, like, find work that people are posting about needing. Or, like, I don't know, it's funny, because I actually didn't take on any new clients, except for this one, which goes back to starting something, but I started to think about needing to have a more easy to explain task based description. So it's funny that the launch angle is actually perhaps more appropriate. And I'm also kind of it just, I think it makes me feel good, because it clicks with a lot of things that I've done that feel important or valuable, but I wasn't sure, like I didn't feel good about excluding them.
Find the theme, then my take: they're the same you
29:08
Yeah, creating some type of value based wrapper for this. Yeah, right. Sort of positioning your work in the problem you solve doesn't eliminate any any of the tactics that you might want to bring to bear, right? And you know, some of this is going to be informed by the discovery calls that you have, right? But maybe one of the things that that you offer is just the copywriting in service of a launch, right? Maybe you don't have to do formulations for every single client, but now you have options, and the the work that you're going to be doing starts from a place of value, rather than you having to, like, convince of the value. All right, so there's a lot we could talk about here. There are a lot of directions we can take this, and actually, I have to tell you that I listened to this. Episode about a dozen times, you know, throughout the editing process, and each time I heard a different theme emerge, you know, like a different lesson that I wanted to share with you. So I have notes here on so many versions of this part. I just want to share with you what I had in my notes. All right, maybe you heard some of these things emerge as well. All right, ready? Let's play find the theme. So we could talk about this idea of offering the service that people are posting about, right? She mentions that because it's easy to believe that if you position yourself for what people are asking for, it'll be easier to get clients. But what people are posting about, those are the tactics that they want. So if you only go for what people are posting about, then you'll always be delivering tactics which lowers your value and puts you really in that executional space and not in the strategic space. So that's one thing. Another time I listened, I felt like the important point was that, you know, we're so focused on other people's successes, our clients successes, that we don't even notice our own. And you know this idea that she'd been helping other people succeed for so long that she didn't even realize that what she was doing was really special. And we could also talk about how when you position your work for value and the problem you solve, you aren't actually limited by how you can solve the problem. So you can use any tool you have in your toolbox, even new tools that you learn every day. So when you position your work for value, you won't get bored or be stuck doing the same thing forever, like, you know, a lot of people are worried that they will be so there are a lot of things we could talk about here, but I wanted to kind of get back to how we started this episode about the you then and the you now. Because, I mean, I was talking about it in terms of me when my son was born, but I know a lot of us struggle with this in our businesses. Because in your business, you might have left behind a corporate career where you had a big name behind you, and now you don't have that backing. And for a lot of the women I talk to, it can make you feel smaller, or maybe you were part of a team or a department, or you had a great boss, and now you're doing it on your own, and that can make you feel kind of alone. And it can sometimes feel like as soon as you start your business, you know all those years of experience that you have in your career, those 1520, year careers that you have, a lot of that experience kind of evaporates, and it feels, on some level, like you're starting from scratch. You know, all the good things you did in your career, you can't bring them into this, or they don't transfer when you talk about your work now. And one thing that's been clear to me as I've been going through this process for myself that might be helpful for you too, is that the old you and the new you can exist at the same time. They are the same you. So instead of trying to look at the experience of your past career and feeling like it's somehow gone away or diminished or not relevant anymore, what if you said to yourself, and this is the phrase, the exact phrase I actually share with my clients, what if you said to yourself so all the stuff I did before? That's how I know how important this work is, because I've seen why companies need this, and I've seen why it hasn't worked in the past, and I've also seen what's possible when it does work, and that's how I know how to make it work, right? That's how I know how to make this more successful. It's actually a really useful exercise if you want to practice it for yourself after this episode, because the truth is that the you before and the you now, they're the same, you and you, you're pretty freaking great. You do incredible work for your clients and your clients who need the value that you provide, they're out there waiting for you.
Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence, and how to get paid for your value, not your time. And There's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply. And we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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