Leah Neaderthal

I open Netflix, find my name among the family members who share our account, and in a few seconds, I’m in a familiar place: the office of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana.

Yes, I’m watching Parks and Recreation yet again.

I’ve seen each episode several times, but that doesn’t matter. I’m one of the millions of people who have found themselves re-watching their favorite TV shows, trying to find predictability in the face of uncertainty.

No matter what’s going on in the world today, the worlds of Pawnee, IN, or Dunder Mifflin, or the fabulous New York of the 90s, or Westeros, things are the same.

These unchanged worlds provide some relief to the changes around us, when we’re asking ourselves questions like, “What will school look like for our children in the future?” “Will we ever feel comfortable congregating in big groups again?” “What will travel look like?”

And trying to run a business in the midst of all of this brings its own set of changes to how we work with clients, how we get new clients, and how we balance our business and the other parts of our lives.

All of these changes… they can feel disorienting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about change. And one thing I’ve realized is that even with so much changing around us, there are a lot of things that are actually the same – they haven’t changed at all.

Here’s what hasn’t changed:

Getting clients is a process of taking action consistently. Consistency was always the only way to grow a business, and it’s still the same.

Getting clients was always a long game, and it still is. There is no silver bullet.

When you’re selling to businesses, the average sales cycle takes 3-18 months. Women tell me that they’ve done something for two weeks, “but it hasn’t turned into clients yet.” and I say, “of course it hasn’t.” That wasn’t how it worked before, and that isn’t how it works now. Which leads to…

Clients still need your help to say yes. Clients have always needed your help to understand the value to their business, navigate the sales process inside their company, and get to yes. As a consultant or coach, you are the expert in your own sales process, and that hasn’t changed.

These fundamentals are still the same. If anything, they’ve come into even clearer focus over the past several months.

These fundamentals are why I started SIGNED. To help women stop grasping for the next silver bullet, resulting only in disappointment, and instead teach them the fundamentals of how to actually land the clients they want, today and tomorrow. So they could actually learn how to sell that stayed true to who they are.

Let’s be honest. There are way too many questions we have on our minds right now. One of them shouldn’t be, “Why can’t I do this?”

Because the truth is… you can.

If you want to learn the fundamentals so that you can eliminate the questions about this part of your business, finally learn how to land the consulting clients you want, and get help from me each step of the way, I want to invite you to apply for SIGNED. The October 28th class is filling up – see recent results from students and apply today.

To your success,
Leah

I was working at a software company in Chicago as their corporate marketing director, and I was tasked with finding a new marketing tool for our team. After looking around at a few options, I found myself on the phone with a salesperson for one of the more promising options.

I was on the phone with him as we had a great conversation. We had some chit chat, he asked me some great questions about my team’s goals, he ran through the standard pitch, he told me how it works and what they could offer. I was actually enjoying learning about what the tool could do for us.

Then before I knew it, he concluded the conversation with,

“So, what do you think? Are you ready to say yes?”

As soon as he said it, I remember thinking to myself, “Are you serious?”

Did he really think I could just make a decision that fast? I had a whole chain of command that I had to go through. I had to talk about it with my VP. We had to sell it to the CMO. And we had to take it to finance. We weren’t a huge company, but that’s just how decisions were made. There was a lot I had to do before I could even think about committing to anything.

Because that’s not how it works! Having a quick conversation and saying yes on the phone – that never could have worked. That’s not how I could have said yes. And for the clients of the women I work with, that’s not how clients buy.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people trying to convince you that your clients — companies of all sizes, from solopreneur to Fortune 500 — that your clients can buy like that. That they can say yes after one phone call.

And even more unfortunately, those people are business coaches.

I see it all the time: “How to close clients in just one call!” “The funnel to fill your calendar with high-paying clients!” A simple formula like this one:

They might work for B2C. But if your clients are businesses, this just won’t work. You have to know:

How to message your work for value, so they know exactly where to plug you into their business.

How to lead an awesome conversation that builds the relationship and moves the sales process forward.

How to price your work to help them say yes and get paid more (yes, you can do both!).

How to write proposals that clients want to say yes to.

How to lead a sales process so you won’t be ghosted.

You can’t land B2B consulting and coaching clients with a formula. The only way to get the type of clients you want, especially right now, is to actually know how to sell.

—

With everything going on right now and the pressure to want to grow your business, it’s no wonder you’re hoping to find the fastest way to get somebody to commit.

But I want you to pause for a moment and think.

Think about a time back in the days of your corporate life when you were faced with a decision just like mine, Would you have been able to say “Yes?”

And now, running your own business, what would you do instead to help your clients say yes?

That’s why I’m leading a live training this week, all about how to secure consulting clients, even if you’re convinced that no one is hiring right now (hint: they are!!)

LIVE Training:
How To Secure Consulting Clients… Even If It Feels Like There’s No Way Clients Are Spending Money (hint: they are!)
Tuesday, October 13th

(Want to send this training to a friend? Here’s the link you can send: https://growthworks.lpages.co/secureconsultingclients)

So what are you ready to learn today? Join me!

To your success,

Leah

We recently celebrated the Jewish New Year, and RBG left this world, which has me thinking about beginnings and endings.

Somehow, in the blink of an eye, I am now the mother of a one-year-old.

My son, Noah, turned one back in August, which feels simultaneously like yesterday and 847 years ago.

He has lived more than half his life in quarantine.

I look back at the woman I was before he was born. The woman who thought she’d spend maternity leave reading business books and knocking out work projects. I look back at her and I think, Oh, to be so naive.

I look back at the things I worried about before I became a mother, and I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

I worried that my natural need to do things quickly would make me an impatient mom, or impatient with him.
I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do when my son cried, or when he needed me.
I worried that I would somehow not be enough for him.

But the truth is, I’m finding that I want to give him all the time in the world.
When my son cries or needs me, I hold him.
I am enough for him.

Thinking back to before he was born, here are things I didn’t worry about:

A global pandemic
The future of democracy
How is this even a list
No seriously
WTF

And now, when I hold my sleeping boy, I wonder what kind of world I’ve brought him into.

—

Back in March and April, when coronavirus really started to heat up, my go-to coping mechanism was, “Fix other people’s problems.”

I snapped to attention and tried to solve All The Problems, spending hours coaching students, and giving my clients the guidance they needed…

… until I nearly collapsed from the exhaustion inherent in parenting a 6-month-old in quarantine with no childcare while running a business and taking care of everyone else but myself.

My wife Emily sat me down for a Serious Conversation about how I had to remember to take care of myself, of us. It’s a conversation each of us needs to have with each other and ourselves.

So. Imagine that you and I are sitting down at the kitchen table for a Serious Conversation. Here’s what I’d say.

You can’t fix everything.
But you can take care of yourself.

I’m right there with you when you say that you’re terrified for the future of democracy. I hear you when you tell me you’re worried no one will ever hire you again. (I’ll be talking about that more in the coming weeks – see the P.S. to join me).

But I also know that that what’s underneath all of that, is what you’re not saying:

You are so tired.
You are depleted.
You can’t imagine doing this for another eight months.
Or another four years.

Your tank is empty. Mine is, too. So here’s what we’re going to do.

One thing.

One small thing.

Every day.

If that one small thing is to simply wake up and be kind to people, that’s OK.

But if you have one ounce of energy, then every day, do one small thing for your business. One email to a potential client. One post. One follow-up with someone you haven’t heard from in a while.

Just one thing.

If you’re consistent — if you do your one thing every day — it’ll work. Not overnight, and not in a week, but it will work.

I won’t bullshit you and tell you that it’s going to be easy or that I have the answers to everything.

But consistency is the only thing that’s ever worked, and it still works now.

You don’t have to do all the things. Just one. Every day.

And take care of yourself. We’ll get through this.

To your success,
Leah

If you’ve noticed, I’ve been a little more open with you these last few weeks.

Maybe it’s the separation from human contact that’s making me crave some form of closeness and intimacy.

Maybe it’s just another sign up of growing up and being more comfortable with who I am.

But I’ve committed to sharing more about myself and more of myself, so I thought it would be… fun? Interesting? Scary? Challenging? to share a few things I’ve never really told you before. Five things that might surprise you to learn about me.

These aren’t great existential lessons, or even necessarily profound insights, but they’re things I thought it was time you should know.

Read on, and after these five things, I’ll tell you why this is important for business.

Here we go.

I’m 5’2”.

Most people are surprised when they meet me in person for the first time because I’m pretty short, even though I have what I sometimes call, “a tall personality.” Being short used to bother me. In fact, I used to lie on my driver’s license and give myself an extra inch until one day I realized… I didn’t care.

In a weird way, you could say that I grew into my body. I rarely wear heels, and I’m done pretending to be someone I’m not.

I’m TERRIFIED of live video.

Every single time I go live, I sweat. It makes me nervous, I feel awkward, and I worry that I’m accidentally going to say something completely wrong, or suddenly start spouting off gibberish.

I work on myself all the time, so this is something I’m working on. So when I do go live, it’s because I know what I can share truly helps women like you, who want to learn how to land higher-paying clients. When you drop hearts and likes on my Facebook lives, you have no idea how much it means to me.

I dropped a college class so that I could graduate with honors.

This is actually kind of embarrassing. If you’ve ever read Mindset, by Carol Dweck, you’ll understand when I say I had a true “fixed mindset” for a long time, so I really hated doing anything that didn’t come easily to me.

Second-semester senior year, I signed up for a class in Intro to Jazz (hey, it was my last semester of college). I thought it was pass/fail. The day I found out I was taking it was for an actual grade, which happened to be the week before the final exam, I dropped the class because I didn’t want to risk my GPA. I still feel… not quite guilty, but definitely something about this. Like… I cheated the system.

Hey, I like jazz, but not enough to sacrifice my integrity.

I HATE numbers and spreadsheets.

This one feels really big to me because I know exactly how important it is to track information. I teach my students that tracking is important. I do it, but I hate every second of it.

I feel like I should find it empowering like I should enjoy tracking my numbers. But I don’t — possibly because if I don’t look at the numbers, then I don’t know the numbers, and I won’t risk falling short of my insanely high expectations and goals.

Yes, I’m working on it. And slowly but surely, I hate it less and less as time goes on. But it’s certainly not my favorite thing.

I used to hate setting goals.

Hi. I’m Leah, your coach who helps you set goals. And for years I really hate setting goals, because I was afraid I wouldn’t hit them. See above, re: insanely high expectations. In the back of my head, my inner monologue goes something like, Well, if you don’t actually set the goal, then you won’t fall short of it. My default mode was simply to work harder and do more. Thanks to a whole team of people who have helped me – coaches, my team members, my wife – I’ve learned how to set goals and make a plan to achieve them.

Well.

It’s all out in the open now. I’d like to say that it feels really good to be honest and open like this, but the truth is that it’s really fucking scary. There’s definitely a part of me that thinks you won’t like me or respect me if you know the truth about me.

But it’s important for me to be Leah, so here we are.

And, it’s important for YOU to be.

As girls, as young women, in college, and in our careers, we’re taught that we need to act a certain way. Look a certain way. Project ourselves a certain way. Or else we won’t be respected. We won’t be liked. We don’t succeed.

And we bring that into our businesses as well.

I talk to women every day who feel like they need to be super-professional, or buttoned-up, and they end up feeling stilted. Inauthentic.

But in your business, you’re the boss. No one is going to fire you if you’re too informal. Or too personal. Or too much. Or too… you.

You can be yourself. You can show up however you like. And you can show up how you really are.

You might serve business clients, but you don’t have to follow the rules of Business (capital B).

You are and you can — and should — show up exactly as you are.

To your success,
Leah

I’m ten years old. In the fifth grade. I haven’t learned what to do with my curly hair, so it’s frizzy. My corduroy pants are just the wrong shade of blue, and just the tiniest bit too tight, and I’ve tucked my shirt in, which doesn’t help.

I’m carrying my spelling book plus the two books I got from the library last period, hugging them to my chest, and walking towards English class.

At the far end of the hallway, I spot Marcy, Laura, and Diana. (Names have been changed to protect the guilty.) These girls have been my friends since kindergarten, and normally I’m walking with them.

But ever since Jocelyn showed up this year, it’s been different.

Jocelyn waltzed into school with her perfectly straight hair and her clothes from The Limited and turned my world upside down, and not in a good way.

She invited every girl in our class to her birthday party, except me.

She turned all of my friends against me.

And now, she comes around the corner, links arms with Marcy, and the four of them turn around and run away from me, laughing.

I’m now 40 years old, and I can still hear the sound of their laughter echoing off the school walls.

Rejection.

It sticks with you for a long time, and its effects show up everywhere.

In my corporate jobs, I was more comfortable working in the background, not wanting to draw attention to myself.

When I started my consulting business, I’d walk into meetings with potential clients, and I’d wait for everyone to laugh at me.

Even when I had great working relationships with my clients, I’d be so afraid to say no to a request because they could fire me at any moment.

I hated the idea of putting myself out there on LinkedIn or Facebook.

I allowed my former business partner to take all the credit and be the face of a business that I was fully running and an equal part of.

That lonely little girl was still inside me, still hurting, still afraid.

Can you relate?

Is there a part of you that’s still that scared and shy middle-school kid, just hoping you’d have someone to sit with at lunchtime? If so, you’re not alone. There’s nothing to say except that rejection sucks.

But here’s the thing.

In order to become the version of myself that I am now, I had to go through some serious change.

I had to fall in love with myself. I spent a year doing it. I did only the things I wanted to do, that made me feel good: I flew kites, ran two triathlons, made my mom’s chili recipe, visited my parents, moved closer to my sister, and went to therapy.

I got hired by a client who saw me, despite my best efforts to hide myself. And when she saw me, it forced me to see myself.

I saw that I was the person who transformed her speaking and consulting business. I doubled her revenue in a year — and then turned around and doubled it again.

And I realized that I could help more people — but that I’d have to be visible. I’d have to be seen.

It was terrifying — but I did it. Because somewhere between fifth grade and ten years ago, I turned into a grown-ass woman.

If you’ve been made to feel less than, if you have this deep fear that you’ll be rejected yet again, I get it.

But I want to help you fall in love with yourself and claim your spot on the stage. You deserve to be seen. You’re worthy.

You’re a grown-ass woman, and you’re here to do amazing things.

To your success,
Leah

I was once in a relationship with someone who told me I “didn’t have the face” for short hair.

She told my friends — and me — that she was the prettier one in the relationship.

And after we had built three businesses together, she told me that I didn’t deserve the title of Co-Founder.

You might be saying, “Why on earth would you date someone like that?! You must have gotten rid of her after she showed her true colors.”

But I didn’t get rid of her.

In fact, when she proposed, I said yes to her.

Why? I didn’t think I could do any better. I didn’t feel worthy.

—

We need to talk about worthiness.

You know worthiness, right? It’s that feeling of being good enough. Feeling that you deserve to take up space.

Everyone (but women especially) is continuously exposed to messages that say we’re unworthy. We internalize these messages whether we want to or not, and they get lodged deep in our psyche.

Then those messages of unworthiness show up everywhere.

They make us think we need to lose 15 lbs before we look good enough.
They keep us from pushing for promotions or salary increases.
They keep us in bad relationships.

This struggle for worthiness also shows up in your business. It’s keeping you small, and it’s keeping you broke.

It takes anything you do to get new clients and makes it feel salesy. Note that I didn’t say – It makes it salesy. It makes it feel salesy.

It makes us say, “I need to follow up, but I don’t want to be annoying.”
It says, “There’s no way I can’t charge this much. Let me reduce that a bit.”
It says, “I don’t want my client to feel like I’m taking advantage of them.”

If we’re going to talk about getting new consulting clients, then we have to take a close look at worthiness.

It’s why I spend a full ⅓ of my SIGNED program on the elements of worthiness, shining a light on each so that you can build authentic, lasting confidence.

Because I can teach you how to raise your prices six ways from Sunday, but if you don’t think you deserve it, nothing I say will work.

If any of this resonated with you, ask yourself: Where is worthiness showing up in my life? Where is it showing up in my business?

And most important: Am I interested in making a change?

Take a moment to think about that. If you’d like, tell me what came to you.

—

So, what happened to that relationship? We called off the wedding three weeks before the date. Best decision ever.

And after taking time to fall in love with myself, I found my sense of self-worth. And I met my incredible, loving wife, who sees my worthiness. And our 1-year old son thinks I’m pretty great too.

To your success,

Leah