Leah Neaderthal

(Before I even get into this story, I have to skip to the end because I’m just so excited: Congrats to my student Maggie who closed a client during a call for the first time ever. And then 15 minutes later, she did it again. Awesome job!!)

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So, if I’m being totally honest, I used to rush to get off the phone with prospects.

It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to them – I was great at the “getting to know you” part. It’s just that I couldn’t ask for the business.

Asking for the business takes three things:

1. Talking price
2. Gaining alignment on moving forward
3. Understanding your prospects’ process for making a decision

I felt uncomfortable doing that, so I’d defer. When I felt like it was the right time, I would say, “Well, why don’t I put together a proposal and we can go from there?” And they would always agree.

And just like that, I’d have a proposal to write, but WITHOUT knowing if we’re in the same ballpark budget-wise, and without knowing if they’re ready to say yes.

—

When you don’t know how to ask for the business, it’s expensive for your business.

You waste time on proposals for prospects where it’s not even a good fit.

You get your hopes up for opportunities that you follow up with for months, when there’s no chance they’ll say yes.

And you lose opportunities that could have said yes on the phone, but you created an unnecessary delay.

I shudder to think about all the time I wasted on proposals, the prospects I kept following up with, and the clients I lost.

All because I couldn’t ask for the business.

—

It took me years to figure out how to actually have these conversations.

How to talk price and not immediately back off by saying, “… but I’m happy to work within your budget.”

How to agree on the scope, so I didn’t waste hours writing proposals that went nowhere.

How to get someone to say yes on the phone, in a way that felt COMFORTABLE, not salesy.

But once I did, everything changed.

Once I figured out a way that worked, I started getting Yes’s. I stopped wasting time on proposals. I saw that through the sales process, I was actually building STRONGER client relationships, something I didn’t even think was possible.

And I started feeling really comfortable. I didn’t have to be a certain way, I could just be myself.

Now, I teach my SIGNED students this same method. So it makes me SO HAPPY when my students learn how to do it on their own, so THEY can sign clients in the first call.

Like my student Maggie, who got two new clients, saying yes on the phone, in the same day (in the same 15-minute span, actually!)

This is what’s possible when you learn how to have great sales conversations that feel good, not gross.

And it is possible for you.

—

If this is something you’re struggling with in your business, there are three important things to start focusing on:

1. Learning how to talk price in the first conversation
2. Learning how to gain general agreement on moving forward
3. Understanding your prospects’ process for making a decision

And if you’d like to work with me to figure all this out in your business, schedule a 10-minute call and let’s talk.

To your success,

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.

Marie Kondo. She’s everywhere. You can’t go to Pinterest without seeing her ubiquitous book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.”

She’s revolutionized the way we de-clutter, with her simple methodology couched under the basic principle and question, “Does it spark joy?”

And reluctantly, I’m into it. But not because her internet takeover has worn me down.

I’m into it because she’s right. And for a whole lot more than tidying up.

Take getting new clients, for example.

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Marie believes that unless you truly, deeply love an item, it has no business in your home. Your home should only have the things that bring you joy – thus the question, “Does it spark joy?”

When you have only that which sparks joy in your home, your home becomes a place of peace and calm. You’ll no longer experience that familiar “meh” of pants from last year that just don’t fit right, the keepsake from Aunt Jane that collects dust, or the hand-me-down chair you hate but whatever you’ll probably get better furniture someday.

If good is the enemy of great, then things that don’t spark joy are the enemy of a home where you can thrive.

—

The same is true in your business.

I talk to a lot of women whose businesses are squarely in the “good” camp. They have some clients, but they’re not the ones who really light them up. They’re making OK money, but not the money they want to be making. And they’re working way too much.

They haven’t yet been able to create a business that’s great. That thrives. That brings them peace and calm.

Frustrated, many of those women ask me what more they should be doing.

But I tell them instead that they need to do less. Focus on what’s working, and what brings you joy, and you will bring about more of the same in your life.

So let’s Marie Kondo the F out of your business:

• Work with the CLIENTS that bring you joy.

Stop saying yes to clients that don’t light you up. The ones you feel like you have to take because you need the work. Instead, get super clear on the clients you really want to work for. What makes them different? What distinguishes them? Then go get more of them. You don’t have to fire your clients tomorrow, but you can be much more selective about the ones you take on. This step alone will change how you show up in your business, and create space for you to do the work you truly love.

• Do the WORK that brings you joy.

Early on in my business, I offered all the marketing, all the business development, and all the sales technology. After all, that’s what I had learned how to do when I was running my own businesses, so I could now teach other people. But after a few projects, I realized that actually, I didn’t like doing a lot of it. Just because I could do it, didn’t mean I enjoyed it. So I niched down to the sales part: teaching women businsss owners how to get new clients, get the right leads, have confident sales conversations, master the sales process, and get paid more per project. When I stopped trying to do everything and started focusing on what brings me joy, I found that I could deliver even better results for my clients. And I had so much more fun.

• Charge the NUMBERS that bring you joy.

So many women I talk to are doing incredible work, but not charging enough for it. But, as the thinking goes, it’s better to have work at a lower rate than no work at all, right? Wrong. Those aren’t the only two options.
Charge what you want to make, and you will get clients who can pay those prices. Would you want to have 6 clients each paying you $6,000/month… or 36 clients each paying you $1,000/month?

There are people doing what you do that charge 100x your fees, and there is someone on Upwork who’s doing it at $4/hour, so forget the industry standard. Charge the numbers you want, so you can live the life you want.

—

You can get to a business that makes you more money, doing the work you love, for clients you absolutely adore. Just focus on less, not more.

And Marie Kondo the F out of it.

To your success,

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.

Last week I opened up Facebook and saw a troubled post in a group for women business owners.

The original poster was two months into her consulting business, and as she put it, “reality is setting in.”

She had two clients, and several people who had promised to send business her way if they heard of something.

But now she was overcome with fear and questions. She worried about having enough money, having left behind good corporate health insurance, etc.

All of her fears bubbled up to the same big Entrepreneur’s Existential Question: “Did I do the right thing?”

To the group she asked: what would you recommend?

—

Before I share what I said to her, I want to ask you: have you ever felt this way in your business? Have you ever wondered, “Did I do the right thing?”

If you have, you’re not alone, so perhaps what I shared with her will help you as well:

I said, every entrepreneur feels that way at times, and it goes in cycles.

My best advice is this: make sure that everything you’re doing is optimized towards one goal, and one goal only: getting clients.

Getting clients has a material benefit, of course, mostly in the bank account area. But it has an emotional benefit too: it helps you feel like you’re on the right track.

In the corporate world, there are colleagues, bosses, and management to tell you, “Good job!” and give you positive reinforcement.

When you’re running your own business… crickets. Yes, you can be the world’s most positive cheerleader for yourself, but it’s hard to do that in an isolation chamber. The antidote to dying on the vine in your own business is to get positive reinforcement.

The most powerful type of positive reinforcement is the one that also comes with dollar signs: new clients.

So, I know it’s very easy to tinker with your brand, or change your website copy, or do other things that make you feel like you’re making progress. But that’s Faux Progress. It doesn’t get you closer to to getting new clients.

What WILL make your business sustainable, get you paid, and reassure you that you’ve done the right thing in starting this business? Focus all your energy on getting new clients.

If you can optimize towards that one goal, the rest will fall into place.

—

What do you think about what I’ve shared here? Do you have anything to add? Share it in the Facebook Group!

Xo,

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.  NEXT SESSION STARTING AUGUST 29. Just reply to this email and put “Clients” in the subject line and I’ll get you the details.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.

It had been about 10 years since I had water skied.

Floating in the water, I caught the slalom ski and wedged my feet into the bindings. I grabbed the rope with both hands, and as the boat moved forward and I felt the tension on the rope, I yelled out, “Hit it!”

I shut my eyes and repeated a series of steps I had done hundreds of times: lean back, arms straight, weight on the back foot, dig in my back heel. A few seconds later I was on top of the water and beaming.

Because after decades of practice, waterskiing was second nature to me.

—

Let me be clear: There is nothing natural about water-skiing. By all rational measures, it’s an absolutely ludicrous sport. Your feet are strapped to planks, you hold onto a rope, and you are pulled at great speed behind an engine.

There’s no protection, no helmet, and you can hit the water at dangerous speeds.

And when I flash back to 10 years, old, that’s exactly what happened. A lot.

As I was learning to waterski, I was always falling on my face. I swallowed a ton of water. I cried a lot, although I tried

But as I learned from my Dad and my cousins, I finally started to get it, because I had the critical elements to master something new:

A desire to learn.

Someone to show me exactly what to do, step by step.

Lots of practice and a willingness to keep trying.

Some misses, until there were more successes than failures.

A role model of someone who had done it.

A belief that I could do it too.

And so, 10 years after the last time I skied, I popped up. It was second nature.

—

There’s nothing natural about selling, either.

You go out and offer your skills to someone else, in service of their business. You have to convince them to give you money in exchange for your expertise, and you have navigate the clients’ unique and often irrational decision-making process.

It’s kind of ludicrous, if you think about it.

So it’s no wonder that when you start your business, you don’t know how to do it. No one does.

But it can be learned, and it can be mastered… as long as you have a few key elements.

A desire to learn.

Someone to show you exactly what to do, step by step.

Lots of practice and a willingness to keep trying.

Some misses, until there are more successes than failures.

A role model of someone who has done it.

A belief that you can do it too.

Until one day, it becomes second nature.

To your success,

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.

Since I started my business, I’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to reverse-engineer other people’s systems.

You might have tried it too: see if you can uncover how other people do things, so you can replicate them in your own business.

It goes like this:

1. Sign up for someone’s download
2. Start getting their emails
3. See what they’re offering and the language they use
4. See how they build their landing pages, and what systems they use
5. Scour every piece to unlock their secrets
6. Try to piece it all together

But there are two big problems with this approach:

First, you only see the what. You don’t see the WHY.

I’m naturally curious, and it’s not enough for me to understand WHAT to do. I need to understand WHY things are set up the way they are, and WHY they work.

So when I reverse-engineer things, not only is it unfulfilling, but it’s not as effective.

The second problem is even bigger: Those systems designed for a totally different type of business.

All of those emails, marketing funnels, and automated systems… they’re for selling products, like digital courses. They they have nothing to do with consultative selling – the type of selling you do when you run a service-based business.

They don’t teach you how to lead a consultative sales process. How to lead a great discovery call, and how to design a program that serves your clients’ needs. How to write proposals that work and get you paid more.

And how to do it without feeling salesy.

In fact, NO ONE shows you their secrets to successful consultative selling.

Until now.

On Tuesday, August 14, join me for a free behind-the-scenes training: Smart Gets Paid: Step-by-step to better clients and bigger budgets, without feeling salesy.

I’m going behind the scenes to show you how to get the clients you want, step by step.

You’ll learn:

• My proven step-by-step roadmap to get the RIGHT CLIENTS for your consulting, coaching, or creative services business
• How to CHARGE more, and get PAID more, without DOING more (and without feeling bad about it)

• The three MYTHS that hold every business owner back, and the critical mindset shift that only takes two minutes

This isn’t the stuff you can piece together or reverse-engineer. But I’m showing you each step on this free training.

Will you join me?

Smart Gets Paid: Step-by-step to better clients and bigger budgets, without feeling salesy

Tuesday, August 14

2pm ET / 11am PT

Sign up here: http://bit.ly/sgp-masterclass

See you there!

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.

You know those moments when you realize, “wow – has it been that long?”

That happens to me when I see that “Clueless” came out 23 years ago, or Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam is 53 years old.

It happened again last week when I saw that the very first company I started is now 10 years old.

(image below – if you don’t have images on, click Display Images above).

That business I started in 2008 wasn’t a consulting business at all. It was an online community for cyclists in Chicago called The Chainlink.

I started it because I’m a cyclist, and even though there were a ton of cyclists in Chicago, I couldn’t find people to ride with. So I set up a website, created a calendar of rides, did outreach to local groups, and invited a few of my friends to join.

9 months later, 1,000 people had joined. 6 months after that, 2,000 more members. Then 10,000 members. The growth was pretty amazing.

When I left Chicago to travel, I sold The Chainlink, and it’s still thriving today.

It would be an understatement to say that I learned a ton from that business, but three lessons stand out in particular.

So here are my Top 3 Lessons From My Very First Company

The first two are things that worked well, that you can apply to your business.

1) Focus on providing one critical value first; don’t try to do everything.

The piece I knew was missing from the Chicago biking scene was a centralized calendar: one place to see all the rides, clinics, and other events going on. I knew that if I could get this feature right, it would provide immediate value to cyclists.

So instead of trying to work on every site feature, I focused on building out the calendar first, populating the event calendar with every ride I could find. So that when people visited The Chainlink, they could immediately see how the site could help them.

When I work with entrepreneurs now, I often see people trying to do All The Things, but who still have trouble getting clients. Instead, I encourage them to focus on providing clear value. When they start to do that, their potential clients start to respond differently.

Key Takeaway: Focus on providing one clear value rather than trying to offer a little bit of everything.

2) Talk about your business to EVERYONE.

When I started The Chainlink, I told everyone. Friends, family… everyone I met on the street. Other cyclists stopped at a red light with me. I was excited, and I wanted other people to be as excited as I was. And it worked: The Chainlink grew like wildfire with zero ad spend.

Now I talk to entrepreneurs who fret that they can’t get new clients. But without knowing it, they’ve been making it very, very hard for their clients to find them.

I ask them: Have you told every single person you know about your business? Have you given them the tools to refer people to you? Are you showing up daily on social media? Are you sending out a newsletter at least once a week? If the answer is no, then, as my friend Monique Mayers says, “Your clients aren’t hiding. You are.”

Key Takeaway: Show up for your business every. Single. Day. Your success depends on it.

(Image: Me telling everyone about The Chainlink at a bike swap meet in 2008)

This last lesson learned is a mistake that I made, that I hope you can avoid..

3) Get out of your own way.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I had wanted to run ads on The Chainlink. I knew I was building an audience that would be highly desirable to advertisers like bike and apparel companies, ride organizers, nutrition companies, etc.

Knowing what I know now about online entrepreneurship, list building, etc., any entrepreneur would kill to have a list like I was building.

But it seemed daunting to get that all set up, and I didn’t see a clear path to do it. And if I’m going to be honest, I was afraid of not doing it right. I was completely in my own way.

So you know what I did? Nothing. So I missed an opportunity to turn this passion project business into a real business.

Key Takeaway: Get out of your own way. Ask for help, get a coach, take a course… whatever you need to get out of your own way so you can make your vision a reality.

It was an amazing ride. Happy 10th Birthday, Chainlink.

—

What about you? What lessons have you learned that you would share with others? Share them in the Smart Gets Paid community!

To your success,

Leah

1. Join the free Smart Gets Paid Group and connect with women entrepreneurs who are learning how to get clients too.

This is my new Facebook community where badass women like you learn how to get the clients they want, without feeling salesy. Click here to join.

 

2. Learn how to get new clients without feeling salesy, in 10 weeks

If getting new clients is on your to-do list, but you’re not sure where to start, I can help. You’ll learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, without feeling salesy. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.  Just reply to this email and put “Clients” in the subject line and I’ll get you the details.

 

3. Work with me privately


If you’d like to work directly with me to learn how to sell, get paid more, and get the clients you really want, just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line. Tell me a little about your business and what you’re struggling with when it comes to selling, and I’ll get you all the details.