What if you treated yourself like a client? with Stephanie Nelson

Stephanie Nelson 0:02

I decided that part of taking myself on as my own client is that I should invest in myself the way that I ask my clients to invest in me. And if you want them to believe in you, how are you believing in you and what you can do and what you can become, and part of being the CEO of your own company is believing in yourself and believing you can do it.

Leah Neaderthal 0:30

Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting 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, review and share you Leah, hey there. Leah, here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So let me ask you something. I'm sure that you probably gave your clients your best thinking. You help them get clear on their goals. You create a strategy, you help execute. You probably move mountains to help them get results. But do you give your own business that same level of attention? And for so many women consultants, you know, especially the ones who care so deeply about the work and about their clients, which that's probably you. It's really easy to go all in on your client's business and kind of leave your own behind. But today's episode is about what happens when you stop doing that and when you start treating your own business like it deserves your time, essentially, when you treat yourself like your own client. That's exactly what my client, Stephanie Nelson did. She's a Technology Strategist for nonprofits, and instead of keeping her business vague and reactive, sort of resting on the success that she had, she really started to focus. She got clear, she created structure, and she made decisions, and she started giving her business the same, you know, time, strategy and care that she gives her clients, and what happens next? That's what I'm so excited for her to tell you. So take a listen to my conversation with Stephanie Nelson, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson that you can apply to your business, and then hopefully someday soon, you'll partner with us to help you build your consulting business, and you'll come back on the podcast and share your story. Enjoy, Stephanie, thank you so much for

Stephanie Nelson 3:05

being here. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having

Leah Neaderthal 3:09

me. Why don't we start with you? Why don't you tell the good people who you are, what you do, and who you help?

Stephanie Nelson 3:15

Yeah. So I'm Stephanie Nelson. I am the founder of clarity consulting, and I help mission driven organizations and leaders build the clarity systems and confidence they need to solve complex problems, navigate change and achieve their most important goals.

Leah Neaderthal 3:32

So what does that look like in practice? How? How are you working with your clients?

Stephanie Nelson 3:37

Yeah, so I work with clients in three different ways. I work with them, often on technology strategy. So I help organizations find, fix and implement technology solutions that actually work so they can focus on their mission and not their problems. Oftentimes, that work comes with change management. In a big technology adoption, there's a lot of change. So with some with some of those clients and with other clients, I work with teams and organizations on how to navigate the change cycle so they can move through resistance to acceptance and focus on fulfilling their mission. And finally, I work with some clients in a sort of fractional capacity, and sort of a chief operating officer behind the scenes strategic planning, where I help smart, driven professionals find clarity and direction in their work and their lives so they can lead with confidence and achieve their goals. And how

Leah Neaderthal 4:34

long have you been doing this?

Stephanie Nelson 4:36

I started in fall of 2021. Is when I got my LLC, but my first day of full time work by myself was in January of 2022.

Leah Neaderthal 4:47

What were you doing before this?

Stephanie Nelson 4:50

Most directly, I was the Chief Information Officer at relay Graduate School of Education, and I was there for about eight and a half years. I had been in. In the CIO role for maybe three or three and a half, and it's an odd role for me, who I would not call I'm not a like early adopter of technology. My life and my work has been very technology adjacent, and my secret superpower was that early in my career, I worked with some of the smartest people in technology who showed me that really smart people in tech love it when you ask questions, and they never made me feel stupid for asking questions. And so I got confident at asking questions, and I realized that if somebody was unable to answer my question, it was because we had reached the limit of their knowledge, and not because my question was bad or stupid. And if you can't, really smart people are okay with saying, can you tell that to me in a different way? And they can usually do it in one or two ways. And if they're they can't. They're confident enough to know to say I can't, but this person can, and they're okay and comfortable with bringing somebody else in. And it was a real gift early in my career to have that people surround me with that, because then I could go into any project and I wasn't scared to talk with technologist so project after project where I was doing process redesign and scaling teams, so there was always some technology component, and that led me, indirectly, to relay where we had done some technology projects, and they were looking around and saying, This team is scattered. It was reporting to two different people, and they needed somebody to be able to bring the team together and build the structures of what makes a strong and functioning team. But after doing that for about three and a half years, a couple of things had happened. The pandemic had happened. The organization was on its third executive team in three years, and I was feeling pretty burnt out by all the things, and felt like it was time for a new voice, and I needed something new and different, and I was looking around at different organizations, and was trying. I was desperate to work under an amazing leadership team, and, like, take my skills up a notch, and it was just a hard time in the world. And I don't know that any executive team was like, we're nailing it. It was end of 2021 beginning of 2022 and there was a lot going on. And I found that I was sort of running from relay, but not towards anything else. And had a really pivotal call. Was a old friend, and actually someone you know, well if you Walker, who challenged me when I said, Well, maybe I'll start my own thing. And I said, I'll never do that. And she said, Well, tell me why you wouldn't do it. And I listed all these reasons, and she said, Well, they're good reasons, but they all have to do with math. So can you go do some math around what it would look like and what you would have to make because you didn't say you didn't think you'd be good at it, you didn't think you didn't wouldn't like it. You just are scared of the math, and that's fair, but like, go do some math and then see what you can think. And that conversation gave me the permission to start talking about it a little differently. It went from I'll never do that to I don't think I could do that to, maybe I'll do that to, I'm going to do that. And so started and figured, if I was going to be running in my past, I had run for a lot of other people and had success. So maybe if I tried to run for myself, it would work.

Leah Neaderthal 8:47

Yeah, and I'm so glad that you and Ify had that conversation, she is a sage advisor.

Stephanie Nelson 8:53

Brilliant, brilliant. So amazing.

Leah Neaderthal 8:56

What a gift, also for somebody to just put that into stark relief, like these are, your fear around starting your business is about math, and I'm guessing that math related to things like revenue and clients and whatnot, but not about ability and not about desire to make an impact, right? Yeah, and I think it's so interesting that you said you were looking for this incredible leadership team that you couldn't find, and that then you became your own leadership team.

Stephanie Nelson 9:27

Yeah, which sounds really scary. I mean, it's a team of one, so it was a nice size for me, if we're thinking about it, I was okay with the one. And I think probably my favorite part of owning my own business is that I control my own professional development budget, and I get to buy as many books as I want to read to learn about new things, and I am always reading and always learning and looking for sort of people who I can learn from and grow from. So it is interesting. Thing to think I am my own leadership team, for better, for worse. Well,

Leah Neaderthal 10:04

sometimes we hate our bosses, yeah, right. Well, exactly I have in their in our own businesses,

Stephanie Nelson 10:08

yeah, I've told people I'm like, the thing about it in your own business is, like, if you don't like something, you know exactly who to blame. There's no I did it for this person. Like you get yourself into your own messes, and you get yourself into your own great opportunities. And so take note of when you're happy and what you like, and if you're not liking something, then don't do it again.

Leah Neaderthal 10:34

You have the power to change it exactly. So a few years down the road, then what brought you into this orbit? Like, can you talk about what was going on in the business before, you know, before working with us, like, what? Yeah, you reach out for a reason. Like, what was a reason?

Stephanie Nelson 10:52

Yeah, I had been thinking a lot about what it meant to grow, and I also knew all of my work was from referrals, and it was going well, like I had a packed pipeline. I wasn't feeling like it was going to slow down, but I also knew it also felt like it was luck, and I wanted something where I could work towards keeping it sustainable, and that I wanted to be able to look ahead and say, you are doing these activities, and therefore it's repeatable. I had, I think I was in year two, so I had enough proof points to think like, Okay, this might work, but it still felt like, by chance, everything was happening, and I'm much more risk averse than that, and don't leave a lot to chance. And so I wanted to have a strategy, and I wanted to for even just keeping my business the same size. And I was trying to think about, well, do I want to grow the business? It was, you know, I had such an interesting experience starting this because my career has been in education and in nonprofit, and money was never the goal of anything. And then I started this business, and I was making money, and I was like, Wow, maybe I can make more money. Do I want to make more money? What does it mean to make more money? And I was thinking a lot about, did I want to make more money? Did I maybe want to work less? What are the things like? What were the levers and but I knew that if I was going to make more money, I didn't want to just be working all the time like that. I didn't have a lot of interest in that. So was I going to hire people to build and if you hire people like, what's the perfect ratio of you bring on more people and get more money, but you don't have more stress? Because I didn't. I also it's I love running my own business, and I actually feel a lot differently about the level of stress that I'm in now, I think a lot because of our work together, and feeling like the work is more sustainable and less like chancy. But at the time, it weighed heavily on me of like, if this doesn't work, that's a problem, and I felt this need to provide for my family, and so balancing, what is all, what are all those things looking like? And so it was. I had a coach, sort of for each part of my business, helping me get into the business, and then starting a little bit with some mindset issues. And I knew I wanted to work with someone as I thought about growth and scale and sustainability, and heard about your program, listened to the podcast, and just what you shared resonated a lot with me, and felt really exciting to have a structure. I like curriculum. I like, you know, having homework. I like doing things and moving forward. And so that was, you know, it's a perfect fit,

Leah Neaderthal 14:06

yeah, well, I, I love the the moment that you were in that where you were thinking about these things. Because, you know, I always say, and you've heard me say 100 times, like you do this type of work, not every time you do this type of work, when things are actually going okay, and, you know, they could be better, and you want them to be better, right? It's like, it's, and, you know, in some sort of business coaching, it's like, you you get help when things are bad, but when you're when things are good, and you're in this moment of like, okay, how do I actually want things to be that's when that's the right time to sort of ask the questions that we ask in this program, right? Like it's so i You were thinking about those at the exact right time, and yeah, and I was going back to, I went back to my notes in preparation for this, like our very first call, yeah, and you said something that I has stuck with me, but I think it's so. Perfect for sort of what we're talking about here. You said I decided to treat myself like my own client. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Stephanie Nelson 15:08

Yeah, it is. It was both a time thing, a little bit of hubris, but I knew, I knew I wanted to figure this out, and for better or worse, in my brain. And frankly, a lot of what I did my first two years was sort of figuring out what people needed and then how I could help them. And I knew I needed help with this, and I wanted to find a coach. But if I couldn't find a coach, I was going to figure out if I wanted how I was going to scale and what this was going to look like, and how I was going to become better at sales and all of these things. And so I I purposely took a slightly lighter client load and made time each week to be doing, reading about marketing and sales and looking around for podcasts or coaches, and had set a goal that I would have what I felt like was a sustainable sort of business strategy by the end of the year, and when we came together, then I realized, oh, okay, I can dedicate that time that I had previously spent reading and doing other things to doing Academy curriculum and work, but I had actually made the commitment earlier that year, I guess end of last year, or the previous year, when I had done my strategic planning and sort of entered in for my annual plan for myself, that this was the year that I was like going to end the year with, okay, what is your plan? And the I gave myself a year to figure it out.

Leah Neaderthal 16:41

I think that that's obviously so smart, but, but for a number of reasons. But even before we met, it's like you had already dedicated this time to fo to working on the business or on yourself, right? It's like personal development is, I think, in the types of businesses we run, like personal development is working on the business, right? Because you are the business. And so, you know, and I, I'm sure you've experienced how hard it can be, and we hear from just about everybody how hard it is to make time to work on the business, not just in the business, right, with our clients and whatnot. And so just having, having built the habit of working on yourself and working on your the business is that's a huge hurdle right there. However you feel that time, however you feel that time. And I think it's so important to recognize that, like most of us, or most of the women that I talk to, give so much to their clients, right? They give everything to their clients, and there's very little left for themselves. And so when you thought about teaching, treating yourself as a client, was there part of that that's like, I need to give myself some, you know, the same level of, I don't know, care or attention or strategic thinking or what have you that I would normally give to my clients. I mean, can you walk me through that?

Stephanie Nelson 18:03

Yeah, I think it came from two things. My first year, I was fortunate that I started the business with a full client load, and I just went into some of the busiest time of working, because I had spent the last four months of my previous job lining up client work. But it was too much, because I then couldn't sell work for when that work was done, I only could keep up with the work that I was doing. And so I had a really strong first quarter, and then there was a big dip, and I was working, but I was not working at the level that I wanted to be working at. And I realized, oh, this, this is a game of like Tetris, where you have to have some long projects and some short projects, and you need to sort of strategically time when things start so that you can keep things rolling. Because if you do the like, I'm heads down and then I look up, it can take a little while. And that doesn't mean that you aren't good. It's just conversations take a little while. And truly, if I'm have no capacity to reach out and see if anybody needs anything or what have you, I can't, I kind of can't get the ball rolling on the contract process. And so I had lived the experience of spending no time on the business and then sort of waking up thinking like, oh, okay, well, so I'm not surprised why I got here. What do I need to do? And so that was sort of a gift, in an early lesson in the business of like, it's not a luxury, because you you will end up with this pile of time, and unless you've sort of decided to take a month off and go on vacation, like, you can't really use it, and then you get in your head about it, and and then you're like, really busy other times. And life is life. And I have small kids, and, like, I needed sort of a more sustainable workflow, because I had that lived experience. It didn't feel like sort of a luxury. It felt like, Oh, you've got to figure this out. Out. And then part of it gets into how I do goal setting is, you know, at the beginning of every year I established sort of a goal for my business, a goal for my like self and my own growth, like my brain growth, a sort of physical health goal, and then something around my family. And so I just do that at the beginning of the year, and I check in on it monthly. And so I was able to see not just sort of state that I wanted to do it, but then hold myself accountable to what were the things that I was doing that was going to move the needle to get there?

Leah Neaderthal 20:37

Yeah, I've heard this phrase. It's probably like floating around the internet. It's like a goal without a goal without a plan as a wish, yeah. Oh, that's a good one. And so, yeah, if you have a goal and you're not actively, like, either making a plan or working the plan towards that goal, then you just wrote it down in your journal, and it's a wish, right? Yeah. I want to go back to go back to something that you said real quick about where you were going to take the business, right? Like, how do you, you know, you mentioned, was I going to grow? How do I make more money? Do I hire staff? Or, you know, whatever? I think that the truth, what you find, especially after you get into some of these cycles where you're making money or not making money, or whatever is that you all of those choices are possible, right? But none of them is possible without predictability in the business in terms of, like, client work and money, basically because, like, you can want to grow, you can want to make more money, but if you don't know how to do it and do it without burning out, then that won't happen. Or you want to bring on a team, but you don't know how to get the projects. It's gonna give them something to work on, and that those are connected also. And so doing the work that we do here is like, it's, it's not about telling you how to grow, but it's giving you the options to grow in a way that sort of you want to do it right

Stephanie Nelson 21:59

well. And it's not. It's not like a one way situation, like it's a you can, you can grow and you can outsource things in different ways, like you can bring on somebody part time, or you can get a little bit of marketing support and then build some routines and habits. And you know, it's not, you don't have to just start with hiring a full time person. Oh yeah, I wouldn't. I don't know if I wouldn't recommend that. It certainly depends on your business, but that wasn't going to be the right decision for me. And so what did it look like, and where was I already growing and doing things that I hadn't realized were actually strategic moves. Like, sometimes we don't acknowledge because we're like, oh, yeah, that's just a thing that I do. And so trying to put into place, like, what is the team that's actually supporting this business and who is on it, and in what capacity, even if that means they're, oh, this person is my accountant. And this person is, you know, I don't always think of the team that is doing my books as part of the team, but they're part of the team like i And now, when I think about them more regularly, then I think about, Oh, am I checking in with them? Am I doing what I should be doing for them to be successful? Do I use them effectively? You know, my first year, it was just like somebody to do the books, because that scared me and I didn't want to do that. Like, how do you think a little differently about your work?

Leah Neaderthal 23:28

Absolutely, well, so what does it look like? I mean, what have been some of the results that you've seen from the work that you've done? I mean, what's does it look like when you treat yourself as your own client? What's sort of changed for the better.

Stephanie Nelson 23:41

Yeah, I'm much more one. You said it in the beginning. My language, where I talk about what I do, is a lot tighter. I still read the paper. I'm still working on it, but I know how to talk about the work that I do. I have been able to paint what used to feel like a really scattered Oh, you do these things now. Feels like a much clearer, tighter picture. I feel more confident in my sales calls. I know how to lead a sales call I had, but someone had given me, like, here's the process, here's the script that you follow. That's great. You know, there's people on LinkedIn who are like, you can get this as a giveaway without really having someone break down like this is what this means, and here's how you do it. It's a helpful starter, but I needed, I needed the instruction, and that helped me to become more comfortable in sales calls where I felt like I was leading them instead of begging them to take it. I have offers now I don't have, you know, I'm not asking for help. I'm offering a service. I am much faster at turning around proposals. A proposal used to be a week or two depending and it was five calls, and now I have a. One call, I get you a proposal, and then we have a call to talk about the proposal, and that's the level of investment that I'm investing before we have a contract together. And that feels like the right amount of investment for an organization of my size that I should be doing. I'm more comfortable making bigger asks, and I have ways of engaging with people so that I have, you know, you've talked in the academy about the Etsy offer, the easy to say yes offer. I have that because in on the technology strategy front, the lifetime sort of value of a client, very quickly can go over $100,000 when you're talking about potentially building a system for somebody, or doing a search for them, and then supporting implementation like but those are, you know, relationships that are over a year long, and you don't always Know what you're going to get into. And so I developed an offer that really allows me and my client to get to know one another and really understand what is the problem we're trying to solve. And then we have a much better picture, and I can give them a much better estimate of here's what you need, whether it's a technology search or process redesign or relationship change with your vendor, but sometimes it's not what they thought, and we've had some surprises, and that's where it really feels good to have that shorter offer, Because instead of proposing this really long project that feels risky on my front for me as a small provider, for them, we get to, sort of get to know one another, figure out what is going on, and do we want to continue working together? And if we don't, there's still this report that says here's what's happening. It turns out you have capacity internally to figure this out. You just needed to, like, get crystal clarity on what it is that you need to do. Or actually, you need to go get this particular kind of firm that specializes in a Salesforce implementation. I'm not going to lead a massive Salesforce implementation, but people can take that away and figure out what they need to do. Or we can continue our partnership, and it's a lot easier to say yes to a larger proposal when you have come together for something smaller. And it helps me to show how can we phase out this work and get really concrete on what success looks like? And I never would have done that. If we hadn't had that idea. I would just have put that in as the first part of the project. And I think I would have stayed on hourly work and just had these proposals with wild ranges of money, like it could be this or quite a bit more, which is hard for clients to say yes to, yeah, well, and it adds financial instability to them. They don't know exactly how much it's going to be, so then they have to estimate that it's going to be the highest. It adds instability. For me, I don't know how much I'm going to make, and I don't know how much I'm going to be working like I don't if it's hourly, what is going on. It doesn't recognize I've done this five times. I'm really fast at this. I don't need an hourly rate, I can just bring you value really fast that really quickly helped the way that I thought about engaging with clients and where I would put a couple offers. Here's one way we can work together. Here's another, here's another. And I would experiment on things like they're never going to go for it, but I'm going to try this as an exciting offer, and more than once, somebody went for the offer that I was like, oh, okay, I thought you were going to go for this other one that was more conservative. Yeah? Again, I just, I would never have thought to do that,

Leah Neaderthal 28:51

yeah. Well, so you figured out a way to to de risk both the, you know, the project and the relationship and you, we were talking the other day how it's really hard for clients to sign on to Leah to $100,000 thing. So you're they This allows them to build trust with you, and you also get essentially paid to scope it, right? So this is your your Etsy offer, which, as you noted, the easy to say, yes, offer, can you share? What is that trend? All this, the combination of this, what is this translated to? And like, like the business.

Stephanie Nelson 29:29

I mean, I'm doing work that I love all the time, and I had the opportunity to bring on the person who used to work for me directly at relay. We are now partnering together. We are meeting both his financial goals and my financial goals for the business. And that feels really exciting to me to get to work with people that I love to do, the work that I love to do. Know, to make enough money to support my family, and, more frankly, than I ever thought was going to be possible and I was able to make my sort of revenue projections, I think, something around, like, I don't know, like a month ago or this month, like, if based on signed contracts and the percentage of things in the pipeline that are not dreams, but are like we are having discussions and signing this before the half of the year mark, which feels really exciting.

Leah Neaderthal 30:33

So just to be clear, so you have, you have enough book booked work in terms of signed contracts, or very close to being signed, that you will hit your goal of booked work by the middle of the year. Yes, that's amazing. That's incredible. I just yeah, I hope that, I hope that you're really, I'm proud of you. I hope you're really proud of yourself.

Stephanie Nelson 30:53

I'm really proud of me. Thank you. Good

Leah Neaderthal 30:56

Stephanie, what have been some of the biggest game changers in our work together, you mentioned what I think would be one, right, the Etsy offer. What are a couple others that have really changed things for you?

Stephanie Nelson 31:11

I mean, I really, like, I'm a learner, so I, you know, having the chance to take the curriculum once, and then when I have something come up, go back and re, listen and sort of ground myself in those practices, has been really helpful to quiet my brain. Most of my work in coaching or anything sort of outside of my like day job is quieting my anxious brain and having the community just knowing that the community is there, if I were having a problem, that I could quickly put it in Slack and somebody would help me, means that I don't have as noisy of a brain that's freaking out that I'm by myself, because I kind of constantly feel supported, and things that come up in my business don't feel as overwhelming, because I just take a minute I think about the curriculum that's available. I sometimes I don't even have to go back to it. I just remember, like, Oh no, you learned about that. Like, here are some notes. Or sometimes I go back to it. And so the sometimes being CEO can be lonely, and so having this space to find community when I need community, find sage advice when I need sage advice, like, have the right book at my fingertips. Type of thing is really meaningful to

Leah Neaderthal 32:33

me. It's funny I was, I was thinking back to some of our early calls, and you know, what's the one thing I say when people join I was like, Don't binge this stuff. Like, if you binge it, yeah, it will drive you crazy. And so, and you were like, Oh no, I'm gonna binge it, but I promise I'm gonna go back to it. And I think you pretty much did for for almost everything. What's something else that you learned that and incorporated into the business that has made a big difference for you.

Stephanie Nelson 33:02

The two phrases, and I mentioned one already, like you are offering, you are not asking. So being in that mentality of trying to not take every engagement, like it's this high stakes personal thing, where if they don't say yes, that there was something wrong with the offer like it just might not be right for them. And my job is to hear what is going on with my clients or potential clients, and see where I think that I can help them with their problems and add value, and I can offer them potential solutions or paths to solving that, and they can choose to take those paths or not, and that this is not me begging for work. I'm not desperate. I am doing a service, and if they want the service, great, we'll have a partnership. And if that's not right, that's okay, and it also doesn't mean that I should never reach out to them ever again, because clearly they didn't like me, or they didn't think what I had was good, or any other thing like, it was just like for any number of reasons, not the right time. So that mentality shift has been really helpful, because I was just really uncomfortable in sales. It wasn't just that I like didn't know how to lead a sales conversation. I felt you use the phrase in that one down position like they were always one up, and forgetting that the people that you are talking to are just like the person I used to be chief information officer, or the person leading who needs help, and maybe you're in a position to help them, or maybe not. But it's not but it's not that I'm better than them or they're better than me, but we are just two people having a conversation. So a lot of the mindset work has really helped me, or like the make it so, and the world where you can try things out with one client. Are one proposal, and that doesn't have to be like the way you do it forever. You can experiment, and if it works, then you can make it a part of your business. But I used to feel like I had to be really sure about everything before I could talk to anybody about what I did, or could I put it in a proposal? And, like, I took myself too seriously. And it's this idea of like, give it a shot, make it so, try it out, and if it sticks, then it can just be like, yep, that's how I do my business. And and so it's like, because make it so is both like, you get to decide. But to me, it's also like, gives me permission to just, just try, just say, this is how I do it today and maybe tomorrow, I do it differently, but movement and not getting in my own way is important.

Leah Neaderthal 35:55

Yeah, it's so interesting how because make it so has come up on a number of these, in a number of these conversations, and people take it in different ways. You know, it unlocks something. And I, you know, I love what you're saying about you can make it so today, or the way I do things today is not the way it has to be forever. I don't have to solve it. And, you know, carve it in stone for it to be true. I can see how it goes. And that have to be right today. Yes, Stephanie, fill in the blank for me. So I almost didn't work with you because I almost didn't join the program because,

Stephanie Nelson 36:29

yeah, well, I had taken myself on as my own client, and part of what got me work my first two years was that I figure things out. And there was, I had this belief, like, I'm okay. I could use a coach, but I could probably figure this out myself. And I kind of laughed, there's a beautiful I generally think of myself as a humble person, but that that was like, took a little like, I can figure this out. I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to figure it out, and I don't think the quality would have come. I'm not sure I would have gotten to the quality that I think that I have now, and it would not have been as fast, but I'm really glad that I did not let that get in my way, and that I decided that part of taking myself on as my own client is that I should invest in myself the way that I asked my clients to invest in me. And the truth is, like around the same time we started working together, I was actually stopping and moving away from I can listen and hear a bunch of different problems and do a lot of different kinds of work to I do these three types of work, and if somebody else has a big talent project, that's great. I can refer them to people who love talent strategy projects. I don't love that. And I'm not a marketing expert. I'm not a sales expert. And so while maybe I could have figured it out, like, Why was I I was going to spend so much of my own time and money that I could be spending on client work instead of just focusing and getting the support that I needed, much like better support, faster, support, the right stuff, and so that, like, having that mentality, helped, but I almost didn't, because I thought, well, this is money. I if I can do this myself. Should I spend it? And I wasn't. You don't always count the trade off of, okay, well, how many hours is going to take you to do this? How much is that going to cost you? It was going to cost me a lot more in time not spent on clients. If I, you know, applied an hourly rate, that's going to be ridiculous. And so that would have been bad. So, yeah, I think it like, I think I thought that I could do it myself, and I laugh at myself now, because I, I don't believe that would have been a good decision or true.

Leah Neaderthal 38:49

Well, I think it's, I think it's really hard for self. Starters, ambitious, you know, smart women like us, because we, we have figured things out. We can figure it out. It's like a point of pride to be smart about these things. I mean, hello, the company's smart gets paid like, it's part of the brand. It's part of like, how I feel about myself, even, and so it is hard, I have to say. I mean, even for me and some other things like, it is hard to be like I even though I enjoy the process of figuring things out, some things, it's just, it's better and faster to to get help, you know. And I, I actually had that made clear to me a few years ago because I joined a coaching program. You know, every coach has a coach, right? And so I and it was at an inflection point in my business. And I think even my wife was pregnant at the time, and I was like, I could figure this out, but I don't have time to mess around. Why would I sign up for take for this taking me two years, if it could take me some a couple months, or I could plug in and have it tomorrow? Yeah, but it is hard. It's a hard like mental shift when you're a smart person. Sudden, you've been rewarded your whole career for figuring things out.

Stephanie Nelson 40:03

Yeah, and it seemed it is crazy, and the lack of humiliated that I could figure it out, it also felt, Oh, you're gonna, like, go invest it like this idea that if I was gonna put something in, I had to believe that it was gonna pay off, and that I could do more. And I had to believe in myself enough to say, yeah, the business deserves this kind of investment, like you should spend money on yourself and spending money on myself and the business, like, big money, not not, and I'm not. That's not a statement, really, of the academy. It's more just like, I don't spend a lot of money on myself and therefore doing this, and then saying, like, this is I'm going to get this payoff. Like, you, I don't know it was a leap of faith, but one that I think, like, over and over again. I think about the returns, and then I think of all the places it's helped me to look and say, Yeah, you should get an executive assistant that will help you. Like, yes, can you do this particular thing faster than she can now, great. It's not a great use of your time, and also, she will get faster. So help her get faster. And so it has helped me to loosen the reins in other places and realize, like, why are you should be asking for help in every place where you're not the expert, and you should focus on what you are good at and accept help everywhere else, because then you can let the rest of that shine, and the business will be better. My brain will be better, like my stress level will be better. I've really enjoyed that.

Leah Neaderthal 41:37

Oh, I'm sure, yes, no, it's you're exactly right. So Stephanie, looking back, what would you say to a woman who's in the position that you were back when we before we started working together, what advice would you give her?

Stephanie Nelson 41:52

I mean, I think I would say, invest in yourself the way that you're asking clients to invest in you, and if you want them to believe in you. How are you believing in you and what you can do and what you can become? And part of being the CEO of your own company is believing in yourself and believing you can do it. And that's not like part of the job description, and it's okay for you to have days where you, like, freak out and have those imposter syndromes, but if you don't believe that you can do the work, why would? Why should your clients believe and so and that the community is a place where, if you feel like you're doing okay at that, but have some real days where, like, I don't know, it's a great place to come because there's a lot of us in here who, I think now have more days that are better than harder, but it's a incredibly compassionate group where you can come in, you can get help, and you can kind of invest in taking your business to the next level. You don't have to be just because you're good at the thing that you do, it's not that surprising that you're maybe not good at marketing our sales. Like, if that's not what you do, then big shock. And if you're really good at that, because you're good at that for your clients, well, there's a reason. There's the story that, like the cobblers, kids have no shoes because it can be really hard to focus on yourself, and so especially for people who sit there and are like, this is what I do. Like, yeah, sometimes you gotta have somebody else tell you things that you know. And that doesn't mean that you should have been able to do it. It just means you're human.

Leah Neaderthal 43:33

You're so right, yeah. And I think what you're saying about the hard the community, or it's like the hard days, or the good days, or whatever it's like. Sometimes maybe it'll be your day one day, and for somebody else, it'll be their day another day. You know? Yeah, I mean, the cobblers kids, I hear that all the time. I am familiar with that, intimately familiar with that and but that's just because that's, I mean, there's so much truth in that tale, or whatever that narrative, but it doesn't have to be true forever. Stephanie, do? Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.

Stephanie Nelson 44:05

Thank you for having me. This is a real treat.

Leah Neaderthal 44:10

Oh, my God, that was so awesome. There's just so much goodness in that conversation. And if something Stephanie said spoke to you, post about it on LinkedIn and tag Stephanie and me so we can see what really resonated. So I want to just highlight something really smart that Stephanie shared in our conversation, and it's about her Etsy offer. And as you heard, you know, Etsy is not about arts and crafts. Etsy stands for easy to say yes. It's a clearly defined paid offer that clients can easily say yes to, and it's easy to say yes to not because it's inexpensive, but because the value is so clear and the engagement is clearly defined. And it does, you know, a few really powerful things. For Stephanie, it gets her paid for work that she was already doing for free. It gives her the information that she needs to accurately scope a bigger project. And for her clients, it builds content. Confidence in her and her abilities and gives them clarity on exactly what the project will cost, so they can align the budget and move forward faster. I mean, it's a win win. And actually, Stephanie led a training on this for the Academy members, all about how she created her Etsy offer and how you can create one too. And if you're in the academy, you can find that training in the portal. So I want to pull out one big lesson here, and really it's the whole episode. The whole episode is a reminder and a challenge to treat yourself like your own client, because it's so easy. You know, when you care deeply about your clients and you're good at what you do, it's so easy to give them your best thinking well, you know, your own business sort of gets the scraps and, yeah, I mean, we do that for a lot of reasons, right? We do it because our clients are paying us. We do it because it sort of feels selfish to focus on ourselves. I mean, there's not a whole lot in the culture that's like, hey, women, it is great to focus just on you. We do it because our clients needs feel more urgent, and because we think that we can just get to our stuff later, you know, some sort of nebulous time later. But here's the truth, you and your business deserve your best thinking too. So I want you to ask yourself, Am I giving my business the same level of thought and care that I give to my clients businesses. Am I making clear strategic decisions for myself and my business, or am I just reacting? And am I treating myself like a client I respect and if not, then what would it look like to start doing that? Because you're not just a service provider, you are a business owner, and your business is worth it. So give yourself the time, give yourself the focus, give yourself your own brilliance, because when you can do that, you don't just feel more in control. You start to build a stronger, smarter business that supports you for the long haul. All right, I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai