Leah Neaderthal

Have you ever gone from a huge high to a serious low? In that moment, I did..

I’d just finished up a HUGE project for a client. I’d put literally all of my time into it. The results were fantastic. The client was thrilled.

What difference can two weeks make? 
If you’re looking to get new clients and get paid bigger numbers without feeling salesy… two weeks can change a whole lot.

In two weeks, students in our signature program SIGNED have:

… signed a new client at twice the fee she was charging before.
… doubled the price of a new service and made $4k for something she had been doing for free.
… discovered that her company’s entire sales process was focused on the wrong things, which is why they were losing deals.
… and gained confidence from within. She said: “In moments where I might have talked myself out of something, I found myself wanting to take advantage of an opportunity and say, ‘I want to meet it.’”

If you had to choose a result that would make the biggest difference for your business, which would it be?

1. Raise your prices
2. Make more money per client engagement
3. Figure out why clients aren’t saying yes
4. Gain authentic confidence
5. All of the above

If your business could benefit from one or more of these results, get ready: Applications for the October 3rd cohort of SIGNED are now open.

What is SIGNED?

It’s my 10-week guided sales coaching program, where you learn step-by-step how to get the clients you want, and get paid bigger numbers, all with confidence and without feeling salesy.

You’ll spend 10 weeks with me and other ambitious women entrepreneurs learning exactly how to get the leads you want, lead them to a successful close, charge and get paid more, and build authentic confidence from the inside out. And you’ll get the support you need to put learning into practice in your business.

Ready to find out if this program is the next big step for your consulting business? Book a free laser coaching call with our program specialist here– she’ll help you see if this program is the right fit for you.

These free calls and this program will fill up, so don’t wait. 

To your success,

Leah

Have you ever gone from a huge high to a serious low? In that moment, I did..

I’d just finished up a HUGE project for a client. I’d put literally all of my time into it. The results were fantastic. The client was thrilled.

But despite the fact that I had nailed it with this project… I realized something: I had no idea where my next client was coming from. I was staring at a completely empty sales pipeline.

I felt like I was starting from scratch. And to be honest, I kind of was.

What I was learning in that moment… and what I’m hoping to save you some heartache by sharing… is that you can’t wait until the work is done to start building your pipeline for your next clients.

Signing new clients is a long game. Depending on the size of the client, your industry, etc., you can expect it to take anywhere from 3-18 months to get to a “yes”.

So if you’re waiting until you finish your current client work to suddenly start getting active on LinkedIn or engaging in potential client outreach, and then expecting prospects to be ready when you are…

I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not a sound strategy. You’re already too late.

The best time to start finding your next client is now. Right now.

By carving out some of your current work time to focus on business development starting now, you’ll be giving your business a huge gift.

By putting yourself out there to be found today, by starting conversations with potential leads this week, by establishing yourself as an expert in your field starting now, you’re creating a pipeline you can turn to to find your next client.

And that’s where magic starts to happen.

When you’ve created a pipeline of clients ready to say “yes”, you not only know where your next paycheck is coming from…

You’re giving yourself freedom to choose who you’ll work with next.

You’ll get to pick the projects that light you up.

The clients that you know you can get great results for.

You can stop settling for any client who comes along.

(…not to mention the opportunity to raise your rates, start a waitlist, or start growing a team…)

I want to hold you accountable. Leave a comment below and let me know what you’ll be doing this week to start laying the foundation for attracting future clients! 

(Not sure where to begin? Click here to grab a seat in my free training where I’m showing women just like you how to find more leads on LinkedIn. I’ll show exactly how you can start filling your client pipeline!)

I’d like to introduce you to our littlest member of the Smart Gets Paid team: my newborn son, Noah Gordon Monaghan.

After a 9-month interview process, Noah is settling into his new role as Chief Cuddle Officer. He joined our team on Sunday, August 25, weighing 7.2 lbs and measuring 19 inches long.

My wife Emily Monaghan and I are totally in love.

For the past 8 months, I’ve been scaling my business to prepare for this moment (I’ll tell you more about how I did that over the next few months).

So while I’m spending time with my family, my team is here to help you:

For current students

If you’re in SIGNED and you need coaching help, please post in the Private Coaching Community and tag coach Christine.

If you’re currently in Pack Your Pipeline and you need coaching help, please post in the Pack Your Pipeline Private Community.

If you’re thinking about joining SIGNED or Pack Your Pipeline

The next SIGNED class will start on Thursday, October 3. To learn more about the 10-week program and see results from recent students, visit smartgetspaid.com/signed. Note that this class is already filling up, so don’t wait to apply.

To learn about Pack Your Pipeline to help you get ideal client leads into your consulting business using LinkedIn, with the support of your expert coach Shaily Hakimian, visit smartgetspaid.com/linkedin.

To learn more about both of these programs and see if they’re right for you, please reach out to my Program Specialist, Mandy Miller: mandy@smartgetspaid.com. 

Or you can schedule a 15-minute laser coaching call with Mandy at a time that works for you: click here to schedule a Laser Coaching Session.

If you have other questions
For anything else that’s not listed here, please email my business manager Richard Chen at team@smartgetspaid.com and he’ll get back to you.

To your success,
Leah (and Emily and Noah)

When I first heard about it, my reaction surprised me.

At my university, it was fraternity and sorority Formal season. Hordes of college students playing grown-up, in tuxes and dresses. An over-the-top pinnacle of college dating life.

One day a rumor spread through the houses: “Some girl is bringing another girl as her date!”

My reaction wasn’t awe or curiosity. It was jealousy. Not because I, too, wanted to bring a woman as a date. For me, that would come later in my life.

No, it was jealousy for something else: “She’s doing exactly what she wants to do, regardless of what anyone thinks.” Something I could never fathom.

I had been raised in the South, where I was highly trained in the art of, “How will others perceive you?” Now, in college, I was an insecure senior, tremendously worried what other people thought of me.

Well into adulthood, even into running my first business, I spent years worried about the same thing.

 

Thankfully, now I’ve overcome that, thanks to years of growth: coming of the closet, breaking off an engagement, lots of therapy, becoming a personal development junkie, and finding love.

But I was brought back to that time earlier this week, when I read a quote that hit me right in the feels:

 

“When you worry about what other people think of you, you will always be their prisoner.”

 

It’s absolutely true. During that time — my entire life until recently — I was a prisoner. Not just to what people thought of me, but what I worried that people were thinking about me.

 

It kept me from being happy, from being myself… and when I started my first business, it kept me from getting clients and making money.

 

Since I’ve overcome it, my revenue has quadrupled, but beyond simply money, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, working with clients who I absolutely adore.

But I talk to women every day who are still struggling with the same thing, with the same negative result.

They worry that people will think they’re salesy, so they don’t do anything to try and get clients.

They fear that they’ll annoy someone if they follow up on a proposal or an email, so they don’t follow up.

They worry that clients will think their prices are too high, so they keep them low. Or worse, they tell themselves, “It’s not about the money.”

 

With so much love, I want to tell these women: as long as you’re worried about what other people think, you’ll be a prisoner.

 

If you worry that your prospects will think you’re annoying if you follow up, you’ll be a prisoner to their time and attention. Your prospects are crazy busy, and they’re not going to stop the hundred things they’re doing to get back to you. Fortune is in the follow-up.

 

If you worry that you’ll be “too salesy” by actively building your sales pipeline, you’ll be a prisoner to the few clients who happen to find you. You’ll never have a full pipeline, which means you’ll never be able to choose your clients, charge the prices you want, or smooth out the feast/famine cycle.

 

If you worry that clients will say no if you actually charge what you want to be paid, then you’ll be a prisoner to low prices. You’ll never truly value your work or make as much income as you want to make.

 

What can you do instead? I’m not here to tell you “Girl, be more confident!”. This type of personal growth doesn’t come from Pinterest platitudes. You build it with years of practice.

But I can tell you what I tell every single one of my SIGNED students: you are in charge of your business.

Your scope of services isn’t determined by what other people come to you for. It’s determined by what you want to be doing. Then go find the clients who need that.

Your pricing isn’t determined by other people. It’s determined by what you want to charge. Then go find the clients who can pay it.

Your follow-up is because you know you can help someone, and you’re giving them a chance to get your help. Then go find the clients who value your help.

Start with what you want, then find the clients who fit your vision of the business you want to run, and the life you want to live. Only then will you have the business you want, and you won’t be a prisoner to anyone else.

Oh, and that quote I mentioned above? It’s from transgender rights activist Renee Imperato.
️‍ Happy World Pride, everyone! ️‍

She said to me, “I don’t even like saying my goals out loud, because I don’t want to be limited by them.”

After some encouragement, she finally said them. She wanted to double her income in the next year, and she wanted to stop traveling to clients.

“But I don’t know if that’s even reasonable, or if it’s possible.”

I assured her that yes, not only is it reasonable, it’s entirely achievable.

Then I could hear the change in her voice as she relaxed: “It’s nice to hear someone say that.”

 

—

 

I get excited about goals. Your goals. The bigger the goals, the better.

But something interesting happens every time I speak with women running consulting business, after I them about their goals.

Inevitably, when I ask them how they’re feeling, they say some version of what my client said: “It’s nice to hear someone say that my goals are achievable.”

That makes me feel good, sure. I like to help women see what’s possible.

But it also makes me sad. Everyone deserves to know for sure that their goals are reasonable, and totally achievable.

 

You want to double the revenue in your consulting business over the next year? Achievable.

You want to double your prices, only do the strategic part, and ditch the implementation work? Achievable.

You want to hit the mid 6-figures and never work a Friday or a weekend again? Achievable.

 

I promise you: your goals are achievable.

 

—

 

Sometimes we don’t have people in our lives who can boost us like this.

They may not know what’s possible, because they’ve never seen or experienced it. In those cases, it’s a failure of information.

More often, if they say you can’t do it, or it’s not possible, it’s a direct result of their own stuff, not yours. That’s a failure of source: you’re asking the wrong people.

So let me say it now, if we haven’t had the chance to talk in person:

 

YOUR GOALS ARE ACHIEVABLE.

 

But I’ll also tell you this: what it will take is not what got you here. You need a plan to get there, you need a strategy, you need guidance… and most of all…

You need permission. Not from me, but from yourself. 🙂

It was a story I’d heard so many times before. In fact, I’d had three similar calls about this very topic, that week.

For the woman I was speaking to, the first year of her business had been great. As soon as she announced she was starting her own thing, she got her first clients easily. She quickly found herself busy, and making almost as much as she had in her corporate job.

Now, a year later, she still has clients, and the money is OK, but there’s one thing she doesn’t have. And it’s the one thing she really wanted when she started her business:

Time.

She’s so busy, she doesn’t have time. Not for herself, for her kids, or to do the things she really wants to do, like travel with her family.

Instead, she’s spending all her time on client work. Doing the work, sure. But also client phone calls and emails. Responding to requests, knowing that it’s scope creep, but not knowing how to stop it.

It’s not what she envisioned when she started her own thing. And more, she’s smart enough to know that if she’s maxed out on time right now, that if she keeps working the way she has been, then she’s also maxed out on her earning potential.

It’s not what she envisioned when she started her own business.

That’s because she doesn’t have a business. She has a job.

Sure, she has her own logo, and company name, and she sends emails from her business email address. But she still has a job. Why?

Because a JOB is where someone else dictates your time, you’re paid in direct exchange for your time or work, and you don’t have as much space as you want for the things that are important to you.

A BUSINESS is where YOU dictate your time, you’re paid handsomely for your expertise, and you have as much space as you want for the things that are important to you.

Like Betsy, who just came back from a two-week trip where she didn’t check email at all.

She came back to a paid invoice from a retainer client, two Yes proposals in her inbox, one potential client that’s close to saying yes, three follow-ups for clients in her sales pipeline, and a new lead who booked a discovery call.

Or Stacey, who, instead of charging $120/hour, a scenario that literally leads to over-work, she signed a $30k project upfront, for actually less work and no on-site visits to her client. Imagine how much space that opens up in her life.

—

If you’re reading this and feeling a sinking feeling that you have JOB rather than a BUSINESS, don’t worry. You can absolutely turn things around by focusing on three things:

 

1. Build a healthy pipeline so you can choose the clients you want, and you don’t have to take just any client (especially the ones who push back on your prices).
2. Structure your pricing around VALUE so that it’s not based on time, a block of hours, or deliverables. Hint: if you have a “flat rate” that’s loosely based on a block of hours, then you’re still doing hourly work.
3. Set healthy boundaries with clients. Boundaries aren’t just about boundaries alone – you start setting healthy boundaries from the very first interaction, throughout the sales process, through your pricing, and into your working relationship. Make sure you’re teaching your clients how to treat you.

Now I want to hear from you: which of the three things listed above will make the biggest impact in your business? Write back and let me know!