Leah Neaderthal

LISTEN,

Everyone says that starting a program in January is great to set the intention for the new year. And that’s true.

But if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know that I am not about fluff. I’m not about suggesting that you invest in a program in January simply to “make 2019 the best ever”.

 

There’s a more practical reason that SIGNED is ideal to begin in January.

 

It’s because this is exactly when your ideal consulting clients are looking for YOU.

 

It’s the beginning of Q1, budgets are fresh, and companies have their own agendas for what they want to accomplish in the new year.

So NOW is the time to start conversations with potential clients, understand their challenges and demonstrate how you can help, and send winning proposals.

Because SIGNED is meant to be implemented as you’re learning, you’ll not only be mastering a new methodology for comfortable selling, but now is the perfect match between your intention and your clients’ buying timeframe.

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But if you’re like many of the women who have come to me in the past, you may be wondering,

“Why on Earth well-paying would clients with high-paying projects be looking for ME? Why would they want to work with me when there are bigger providers out there?”

 

Actually, you’re EXACTLY who they are looking for. Here’s why:

First, because you’re smart as hell. You can see their challenges and quickly identify a path forward.

Second, because you’ve got the goods. You have killer experience, and that experience is exactly WHY you know that their problems are crucial to solve, and you know how to solve them.

Third, because you’re nimble. Have you ever tried to turn a huge ship? It takes fucking forever. You work quickly, you’re not about bureaucracy, and if something comes up? You can make the necessary changes fast.

Your clients aren’t just looking for you. They NEED you.

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Just like anything, SIGNED is what you make of it, but past participants in SIGNED are signing their biggest deals ever, landing new clients, raising their prices 5x and signing clients at the new rate, and gaining incredible confidence.

But what I really love is that you can use it as a container to improve any part of your sales process that needs your focus: from really working with the clients you’d love to be working with, to raising rates, to feeling more confident with a methodology that leans into your strengths, and more.

You’ll be working hand-in-hand with me and other women entrepreneurs who are running service-based businesses, to put learning into practice quickly.

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Applications open Wednesday- click here to get your name on our waitlist now to be the first to apply.

I have a question for you, have you ever said, “I wish I had the courage to…?”

You might immediately think, “I wish I had the courage to skydive,” or some huge feat. But what about other, smaller moments?

What about, “I wish I had the courage to put myself out there more.” Or, “I wish I had the courage to charge what I really want to make.”

One of my clients, Cindy Solomon, has been studying courage ever since she left corporate America, where she was the first female C-level executive in a Fortune 50 company.

And I’m SO SO excited, because she just did her TEDx talk, and I thought you would find it really insightful for your business. In it, Cindy challenges preconceived notions of WHAT courage is, and she offers ways to use it in your life. Hint: it’s not just for skydiving.

I highly recommend watching it this week and asking yourself, “How can I exercise MY courage muscle?” Here’s the link to watch.

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But I have to tell you – I credit Cindy for so much in my own business. She’s not just a client, she’s a dear friend, and she came through for me when I really needed it.

Back in 2014, I had just broken an engagement – we had been partners in business and life, running several businesses together.

The week we split, I lost my life partner, my job, my income, my livelihood, my apartment, and my dogs, in one fell swoop. I felt totally lost.

The months that followed were challenging, even though I knew without a doubt that the breakup was the right thing. I didn’t know where I would live, what I would do, or what my future held.

Everything was up in the air. I was flailing around. I thought I’d start my own startup. Then I’d think I should get a job. Then I’d want to go to Africa for 6 months. I was all over the place.

To bring some focus, a friend suggested that I create a vision board.

So one afternoon, as I was making my board, the phone rang. It was Cindy.

I had met Cindy a couple of years earlier. She and her wife, and my ex and I, we had immediately hit it off. She was an early supporter of Lesbians Who Tech, the organization that my ex and I founded. And she had seen me running the three other consulting businesses we ran, so she knew that I was an operations-type person.

When I picked up the phone that afternoon, I had no idea that call would change my life.

Cindy said she was looking for a Managing Director for her consulting and speaking business. She had been quite successful, but she knew that if her business was going to be truly profitable, she needed help to land higher-value clients and streamline her business operations.

It was a contract position I could do from anywhere. Was I interested?

I thought about it. It would be my first chance to take everything I had learned from running my own businesses, and apply it to someone else’s business. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if it would work.

What if the strategies didn’t translate? What if I was a one-hit wonder? But I decided to give it a shot.

The strategies worked. In the first year, we doubled her revenue. We streamlined her business development to save the equivalent of 3 weeks per year.

And in the next year, we doubled her revenue again.

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One day after working with Cindy for some time, I had an epiphany: If Cindy needed this type of business and revenue help, other women probably needed it too.

That’s when I decided to help other women entrepreneurs implement these same strategies in their businesses. And that’s how Smart Gets Paid was born.

The best part? The story continues.

Cindy’s business is still thriving, and every day, SIGNED students are landing higher-value clients, charge and get paid more for every contract, and mastering business development.

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The moral of the story? People may come find you exactly when you, and they, need it.

And when that happens, have the courage to say yes.

To your success,

Leah

I felt the same sense of dread I felt every morning.

I was standing there, in my closet. Looking at my clothes and feeling… meh.

Why? I didn’t know how to dress myself. Sure, I had clothes. But this sense of dread wasn’t about clothes.

 

My problem: I didn’t know how to put together an outfit that made me feel powerful.

 

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It had been the same for about two years. I was fine in the winter, when jeans, a sweater, and some boots could pretty much suffice on any day.

But it was bad in the summer.

You know that old adage from corporate, “dress for the job you want”? Well the job I wanted was clearly camp counselor, not Badass Sales Coach for Women Entrepreneurs.

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I tried shopping. But every time I went to a store, I remembered: I hate shopping.

I had been a chunky kid. In my middle school years, I remember my mother asking the saleswoman, “Do you mind getting this in a bigger size?”

And I remember storming out of dressing rooms when even the bigger size didn’t fit.

So as a teen and then an adult, I avoided shopping, and I assumed that nothing would fit me.

As a result, here I was, in my mid-30’s, long past those chunky days and now a successful business owner… and I was totally inept at something that I felt like most women master in their teens.

I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t this be easier?? Didn’t everyone figure out their personal style in, I don’t know, 10th grade?” I felt embarrassment, and imposter syndrome, and shame rolled into one.

So, for the last few years, I tried to fix the problem on my own, doing what I thought would work. I put together a Pinterest board. I kept trying to shop.

But the Pinterest board gathered digital dust. Shopping trips were a bust. Clothes bought online were sent back.

One day, with the help of my wife, I woke up. I realized that what I was doing wasn’t working. And I realized that doing more of it wasn’t going to work either.

I decided to ask for help. Enter stylist Rosana Vollmerhausen.

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Over three sessions, Rosana and her team listened, sorted, assessed, and recommended. We shopped, and tried on, and took pictures, and tried on some more.

Now, I have a whole wardrobe of clothes that make me look good. And the craziest part? I had a lot of the right pieces already. I just needed someone to show me the right way to use them.

Now, I feel powerful. I feel like I can tackle anything. Whatever my day, or my business, or my life throws at me, I can handle it.

And I see myself differently. I no longer feel like an amateur, I feel like a total badass. And that comes through in everything I do, every day.

And I feel calm. Instead of dread every morning, I’m excited. I can’t believe I put myself through that negativity for so long. Imagine how my days would have been different all these years if the first emotion I felt was optimism, rather than dread?

This problem, the “dressing myself” problem, is something I had struggled with for years.

And it was fixed in weeks. I only wish I had done it sooner.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought about this story as I’ve talked to women entrepreneurs who tell me that they’re going to spend some more time trying to get new clients on their own.

 

They don’t have any sales pipeline to speak of.

They’ve had promising conversations, but nothing’s really panning out.

Their prospects aren’t getting back to them and they’re not sure why.

They aren’t making the money they want to make and they don’t have a clear path to get there.

 

And because of this, they don’t feel like the powerful entrepreneurs that they want to be.

But in spite of this, they want to keep trying the same way. They hope that what hasn’t been working for years, will suddenly start working.

And I want to put my hands on their shoulders, and with all my love, tell them the truth:

 

If what you’re doing hasn’t been working, then doing more of it won’t work either.

 

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I’m not saying this because I’m a sales coach. In fact, this isn’t about me, or my coaching program.

This is about three things:

 

1) The openness to look at how things are really going

2) The willingness to ask yourself if it’s really working

3) The decisiveness to say that next year is going to be different than this past year

 

I’ve said it a hundred times: you don’t have to work with me to learn how to land new consulting clients.

I’d rather you work with anyone, than have you spend another week, month, or year doing things that don’t work.

And if you do want to work with me to learn how to land higher-value consulting clients, charge and get paid more for your work, and feel totally comfortable selling, check out my 10-week SIGNED program.

The next class starts on Wednesday, December 5th. Applications are open now until Friday, November 30th. Spots are limited, so apply today.

 

But back to those three steps, and my wish for you this year: Don’t spend another year doing the same things you were before. If something isn’t working, fix it.

See step 3 above – that’s the most important one. 🙂

 

To your success,

 

Leah

I think we need to talk about confidence.

 

When I have intro calls with my SIGNED students, I ask each one what’s holding them back from landing the clients that they want.

And there’s one common thread. It might be a factor with you too.

 

Confidence.

 

If you’re like my SIGNED students, it’s not that you aren’t confident in general. And you know the work you do is awesome – you’re confident AF in that area.

So why does confidence seem to evaporate when you’re doing business development?

It’s because of what my SIGNED student Betsy Talbot calls “head trash”: all that bullshit you’ve picked up along the way, and that you carry around with you now.

 

Put another way: Your confidence goes back to every experience you’ve had in your life.

 

Every authority figure who told you not to “toot your own horn”.

Any classmate who teased you, or didn’t want to sit next to you at lunch.

Anyone who didn’t call back you for another date.

Anyone who talked down to you at work.

Everyone who made you doubt yourself. Anyone who made you feel rejected.

 

The residue of these experiences lodges into your brain, your cells, and becomes “head trash” that rears its ugly head.

THEN you bring that into a sales environment. And don’t forget that there’s even more pressure because this is this is what you count on for your income. So the doubt and fear of rejection is multiplied.

So is it any wonder that we feel like we don’t have confidence?

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So what’s the fix here? Well, there are a few things.

First, we can be compassionate with ourselves. We can acknowledge that we’re the result of our experiences, and be kind to ourselves for the negative experiences we still carry with us. (One of the pillars of the Manifesto for Ambitious Women Entrepreneurs is about this.)

Second, we can be aware when our head trash is rearing its ugly head. And we can tell it to shut the hell up.

Third, we can follow a business development system that’s based on proven strategies and a repeatable process that works. So that our ability to land new clients isn’t based on our confidence, or whether our head trash is at a 2, 6, or 10 on any particular day. So we can do what we need to do without doubt and fear, because we know we’re taking the right steps.

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What about you? Are there experiences in your life that have affected your confidence? If you were to talk to yourself at the age when you experienced them, what would you say to yourself?

If you’d like, write back and let me know.

To your success,

 

Leah