New Beginnings

Leah Neaderthal0:02

you're listening to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching 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 a sales approach that feels comfortable, makes you feel confident, and that works consistently. And now I teach women how to land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching businesses. So whether your client contracts are $2,000 or $200,000 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 imagined, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Welcome to Smart gets paid.

Leah Neaderthal0:53

Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning into this episode, and Happy New Year. I hope you had a great holiday season. However you celebrated, and hope you also get to take some time for yourself. I spent the holidays in North Carolina with my wife's family, and we had a really nice time. And speaking of the holidays, we did like a Secret Santa with my wife and her siblings, and I got an awesome Secret Santa gift that I'm using right now. It's like a little portable podcast studio, like a little portable recording studio. So if you can picture this thing that, like, goes on the desktop and almost picture like a half circle that is about two feet high, and inside the circle there is that egg crate material, you know, that they'd use to minimize reverberation in a sound studio. And then inside of that is where I put my microphone and all of my other stuff. So if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that in the earlier episodes, I talked about my actual setup, which especially during Prime quarantine, early covid time, when we were staying at my in laws house, that setup was pretty janky. I described how I used like a big computer monitor and I draped a beach towel over it. So that was my setup. So I guess I've just sort of, I don't know, made it, gotten one step more profesh with this thing, and thanks to my sister and brother in law for being great secret Santas and for supporting the podcast. Another thing I did during the holidays was I got covid, which sucked, like really bad. My wife, my son and I, we all got it, some other family members got it. And what's so annoying about it is that, like a lot of you listening, we've been so good and safe and taking all the precautions and everything. And here we are. We still managed to get it to be totally honest, it wasn't that bad. It felt like a really bad cold. And I hate even saying that it wasn't that bad, because I don't want to imply that, like, covid isn't bad. I mean, I'm the furthest thing from like, a covid denier or whatever, which I can't believe that's a thing, but we take it super seriously, and it wasn't that bad. It was like a bad cold, because we trust science. You know, we are vaxed for double Vaxxed, we are boosted, and so that's why, when we got it, it really wasn't that bad, but we're all fine now, thankfully, yeah, but that's something else I did over my winter break. So I hope that yours was covid free. I hope you had a nice break and a healthy holiday season. So I'm starting this year on what feels like a new foot, and really starting a new beginning, because at the end of last year, I made a decision for my business, and I changed course in my business in a way that was really scary but also really freeing. And I want to walk you through how I made that decision and share some lessons that you can apply to your business. So let's just jump right to the decision and get that out of the way, which is the at the end of last year, I announced that I was retiring all my courses. These are the courses that I have spent five years building my name on and building my reputation around and my brand around, and working with clients in these courses. At the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you what we're doing in its place, but before that, let's go behind the scenes, and I'll walk you through the decision. Yeah. So I decided to close, my Flagship courses pack your pipeline, to help you get visible on LinkedIn and get leads into your business and signed, to teach you how to turn leads into paying clients and help you get paid more. And also my two smaller courses, the painkiller workshop, to create your power positioning and roadmap to clients to help you craft a sales process that works for your business. In fact, you guys on New Year's Eve at midnight, that's the moment that I actually took down the pages on the website for each of these courses, and I turned on this redirect. So if you go to any of the old pages for signed or pack your pipeline, or any of the other. Courses, you'll reach a page that says, you know, the as of December 31 these programs are retired, etc, etc. But that's sort of how I closed out the year, like, literally, how I closed this chapter in my business. And it was kind of sad, you know, like it was just this moment where I was like, wow, okay, this is really happening, because this decision and making this change has been exciting, but also really terrifying. Because, I mean, I've spent so much time and energy creating these courses, marketing them, getting the word out, working

Leah Neaderthal5:35

with students in these programs, seeing the results from these programs, and here I was closing them, but I was doing it because in the middle of last year, I looked at what I had created, and I realized that I was no longer actually solving the problem that I saw in the world. So if you've been listening for a while, or even if you're brand new to this podcast and this markets paid universe, you should know that I'm committed to solving the problem I see in the world, which is this, so many smart, ambitious women are leaving too much money on the table because they don't know how to get great clients, and they aren't getting paid what they could be. So this is, like, my reason for being, right? It's like, why I do everything I do. It's why I created this podcast that you're listening to right now. So but that's my sole mission, my reason for being then, how did I get to a place where I wasn't doing that like, how did I get off track? I spent a lot of time this past year thinking about that. To answer that question, we have to go back to 2017 so at that point, I had already created and run a few consulting firms. I had worked inside my clients business as a consultant, helping them get more clients and increase their revenue. And then I had been working with women one on one to teach them how to get more clients in their business. But that year, in 2017 I took everything I knew about selling up to that point and everything I had been teaching clients one on one, and I turned it into a program called signed I actually talk about that process in episode five of the podcast called The fastest path to revenue for consultants. So check that out when you get a chance. So signed was the very first course I put together. I ran it for the first time as a beta, just with a small group of women, and then I officially launched it in 2018 and even though signed had a lot in it. And if you took signed, then you know, like nobody's ever accused me of, like not putting enough in these courses. But even though signed had a lot in it, and you know, you learn how to lead a sales process and help clients say yes, and you covered things like lead gen and pipeline and pricing and mindset and proposals and negotiating and everything that goes into getting a client, it still felt like there was something missing. And as my students started going through the program, I realized that there wasn't enough in it about filling their pipeline with the right client. And then around that time, I was actually testing LinkedIn strategies for my own business, and I developed a strategy that was working and I could do consistently. It was like this repeatable strategy. So I took that strategy and created the pack, your pipeline course to teach my students the LinkedIn strategies that had been working for me. These are actually, by the way, the strategies I still use today. So then at that point, I had two courses. Then along the way, I realized that my students needed a little more help in positioning and sort of messaging their work around value. So I created the painkiller workshop course to help them create their power positioning. And then last year, I created a tiny program for a small dollar amount called roadmap to clients, and I want to just take a quick detour here and talk about what happens when you go down the path of creating a course. So there's so much out there about how to create courses. It seems like everyone and their mother wants to teach you how to create a course. And once you start to get into this world of course creation, you discover that there's definitely this, like, online entrepreneur playbook, you know, picture, like air quotes, online entrepreneur playbook that you start to learn about. And it goes a little like this, teach a little bit of what you know, and then teach a little bit more of what you know, and then teach even more of what you know for increasing amounts of money, right? Like, there's little courses that are like, small, medium, large, larger, et cetera. And you start to learn about things like trip wires and front end offers and back end offers and all of this stuff, all with the goal of creating online entrepreneur Nirvana, which is a course business that runs itself and gives you passive income, right? Which, let's just level set. We all know that there's no passive income, right? Like, we know that that's not a thing. Because, trust me, I still talk to some women who are like, I just want to create passive income. And I'm like, Girl, there is no passive income, but this online entrepreneur playbook, I had actually done it in reverse, because I had created the big program I had created and signed and then I started creating smaller programs. After that. And so anyway, after five years of creating and running courses and having four courses at different price points, I had completed the online entrepreneur playbook, right? And according to the narrative, I should have been happy, but I wasn't happy, because after I looked at everything I created and looked at the business, I just felt kind of empty because I had these four courses, but I wasn't really solving the problem that I saw in the world, which is to help smart, ambitious women stop leaving the money on the table by teaching them how to get clients into their business and get paid well for their work. Instead, I was solving small parts of the problem in pieces, following the online entrepreneur playbook that says you have to solve a little bit at a time for increasing amounts of money. And so I realized that somewhere along the way, I had gotten off track. Side note, in the process of going from one on one

Leah Neaderthal10:57

work to courses that I've gone on over the past five years, I've learned a ton, and last year, I actually wrote something on medium with what I learned, called the 10 things no one tells you about, going from one on one work to courses, which I highly recommend you check out. If you've ever felt yourself getting lured into taking your consulting or your coaching work and turning it into a course. I'm going to put the link in the show notes. So with this realization that I just sort of gotten off track a little bit, I spent a lot of time thinking in the past year, and I went back to the basics, because here's what I know to be true, to truly get higher paying clients, the types of clients that will sustain and help you run a sustainable consulting business, you can't do it just by knowing, like one or two parts of the system, for example, if you know how to get seen on LinkedIn, but you don't know how to take that visibility and turn it into leads, then you're not going to get clients. And if you know how to get your ideal clients reaching out to you or coming to you, either through getting visible or referrals or whatever, but you don't know how to lead them through a sales process, and you know, keep them engaged and help them say yes and sign on the dotted line, then you're not going to get clients. And if you can get clients to say yes, but you're not getting paid as much as you could be getting paid. And by the way, nearly every woman I talk to is under charging for her work, even the ones who think they're doing fine, because I know, and I've seen it, I know that you can get paid more for your work. So if you're getting clients, but you aren't getting paid what you could, then you're still living money on the table. And I'm just not okay anymore with solving just part of the problem. So solving the entire problem is what we're going to do together in my new program. So having shared all this, I want to just pull out a few lessons that I hope you can apply to your business, and there are four of them, first, solve the problem that you see in the world you started your business for some reason, right? You saw a problem out there, or you experienced a problem when you worked for somebody else, and now you've taken it upon yourself to solve this problem for other businesses, right? So take this problem that you see in the world and let that be your true north, because I talk to a lot of women who look around and say, what's the service that's going to sell, right? What's the service that people actually want? I see a lot of people doing this, I should probably do that thing. Or they try to sell something like a service, it doesn't work, and they think it's the service that needs to change, not the fact that they don't know how to sell it, right? And you can become a little bit unmoored

Leah Neaderthal13:39

in your business as you try to chase what you think will sell, but hold on to the problem that you truly want to solve in the world, and let that be your true north. There is more than enough work out there when you're not only committed to solving a problem, but you focus on how to sell it, and how to get in front of clients, and how to get clients saying yes, not the thing that you think will automatically sell because, PS, there's nothing that's just going to automatically sell out there. So I feel really grateful that, when I decided to step back and had to get back to center and reassess, that I could come back to the problem that I truly wanted to solve in the world as my North Star, and I could start again from there. And that sort of leads to the second lesson, solve the problem the way you want to create the business that you want. Don't follow anyone else's playbook. Trust me, it's easy to get lured into somebody else's playbook, especially when we're bombarded with other people's playbooks, or the playbook that is going to make you a million dollars or what have you. As a consultant, you're probably bombarded with people who want you to create a course or maybe build an agency, and you don't have to do either of those things. You just do you. I sort of fell into someone else's playbook, and I realized that that's not satisfying to me. You know, I will never feel satisfied doing low. Cost, low touch courses, making the sale and not making sure that people can actually be successful with what I'm teaching them. What's been the most satisfying in all of this, in all these years, are the relationships that I have with my clients, and the joy that I feel when they take something that they've learned and apply it and are successful with it. You know, when they land an amazing client, or blow their revenue goals out of the water, or work three day weeks all summer, doing this closely with my clients is the way I want to solve the problem, and that's the business I want to run. So I guess, be brave enough to go your own way. And trust me, this is just as much of a reminder to myself as it is to you. Okay, so the third lesson is, don't be afraid to change direction. And you don't only have to change direction if you don't like what you're doing or because you think you made a mistake. You can change direction at any time for any reason. You can just make a change because it feels right for you. You know, I had been running signs since 2017 and I loved it. I created pack your pipeline, and I ran it both as an at your own pace program and as a live accelerator. And I love that too. I saw two smaller problems that needed attention, and I created courses to address those. I learned a ton. And I don't do regrets. I don't have regrets. I don't really, actually believe in regrets. I believe that you make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time, and I don't have any regrets. And fourth, you don't have to hide it. I was worried that if I changed direction publicly, that it would look like I was bad at business, or something was wrong with my business. But if there is one thing I've realized over the past few years is that there is enough posturing out there and enough business coaches telling you that everything's great and perfect and they're slaying it or whatever, and what we need is actually more transparency. We all need it. So instead of hiding my decision to shutter my courses, I talked about it. You know, I was pretty public about it, actually on on LinkedIn and in my newsletter, and what I found is that people are actually really excited about it and cheering me on. You know, women have thanked me for showing that it's okay to change course. They're cheering me on and sending me support. The most excited women of anyone are the women who have joined my new program, and I'm so excited to start working with them. And were there some people out there who have an opinion about what I'm doing? Sure, and there are some of my clients who aren't happy about this new direction, but the ones who are excited and who are coming with me. I know that their lives are going to change, and they're committed to growing their businesses, and that's who I'm excited to work with. All right, so now that these courses are closed, what's going to be in its place? Well, I've created a new program called the academy. The Academy is just for women running B to B consulting and coaching businesses where you're going to learn a complete, repeatable sales system that spans the entire client life cycle, from teaching you how to get visible to getting leads and referrals to how to lead a sales process to getting paid more. It's a system that you're going to customize to your business, and then it becomes rinse and repeat so that you never have to feel like you're making it up again. I've seen a lot of courses out there. I've seen a lot of programs. I've been in this industry for a while, and this is the most comprehensive sales coaching program out there, and it's the only program designed for women, running B to B businesses, to help you get business clients using a sales approach that works the way businesses work and reflects the way businesses make purchase decisions. So this isn't about how to fill a mastermind or sell a low cost program. This is about how to help you get higher paying business clients. So when we talk about solving the entire problem, then what that looks like is, if you want to get more of the right clients coming to you and learn how to help them say yes, and if you want to learn how to lead a sales process and get paid more for your work, to do great work and have time for yourself, and you want to run a consulting or coaching business that's sustainable, then the academy is how you'll learn that. So back to the four courses. It's not that I'm just like taking the four courses, I'm retiring and repackaging them into a bigger course. The entire system is redesigned and updated for the way business runs today, the way your clients make decisions today, and the way you work today. All the techniques I shared before are getting completely reworked, and there are a lot of new techniques that I'm sharing

Leah Neaderthal19:39

here, and it's all part of the Attract guide, close framework, that's the backbone of the program, because when I think back to when I created the programs, so much has changed since some of this curriculum was created, our world is entirely different. Our client's world, your client's world, is entirely different, and you are entirely different. And. In the past several years, I've learned so much that I've wanted to teach because these new strategies that work in this new environment. So side note, this is actually something like I said I've wanted to do for years. But one dirty little secret about the online entrepreneur playbook is that when you have multiple programs, you're always launching, you know, like air quotes, launching, which doesn't necessarily mean launching something new. It just means like a promotional process that takes four to six weeks, sometimes more each time, and it takes a ton of time and my team's time and attention and resources. There have been some years where my team and I launched eight times a year, which meant that all of our time was spent launching. We were always in a promotional process, and there's no time to do anything else, and certainly no time to completely rework and update a course. So finally, I can do that and share with you all of the new techniques and new ways of selling that we've been testing and that are working, and the Academy is going to have a ton of coaching. Another dirty little secret, I feel like I'm sharing a lot of secrets. Here, but another little secret about the online entrepreneur playbook is that all of those courses for like, increasing amounts of money and increasing value or whatever, it's also about increasing coaching access and really limiting coaching access. I mean, I've decided that I'm no longer okay with any of my students not getting the help that they need because they didn't purchase the right bonus or whatever. Because to learn a new skill, to completely transform your business, you need more than just content, right? Because, think about it. Have you ever taken a course or tried something in your business and it didn't work perfectly the first time? You know, of course, we all have, right? And when you don't have anyone to ask about it, and you don't have the chance to figure out what went wrong and how you can make it better, that's pretty shitty and really demotivating, right? And I mean, I know this intimately, like I'm a total type A overachiever, and so when I don't get something right the first time, I get pissed and I want to get help, like immediately, so that I can make it work as fast as possible. And that's what I loved most about the high touchness of the first two courses. You know what I loved most about signed and the pack your pipeline accelerators, because it was a super high touch environment, and you can get the support the help you needed. You know? Why isn't this working? How can I make it better? What should I do in this case, all of that. So that's why we're combining the completely updated system and the Attract guide close framework with wraparound coaching, which is imagine like being wrapped in a warm blanket of support. It means that you're going to have all types of support to draw from right for whatever you need at that moment. Because I don't know about you, but one of the things that has definitely happened in my world in the past two years is that the way I am in my business, the help I need in my business, changes from day to day, you know. So some days you might be like, fired up and ready to go, and you just need a template and like a word of encouragement and be on your way and killing it. And other times, you might need to sit down with a coach and unpack what's going on and make a plan. That's definitely been the case for me. It's never the same from day to day. So we're including a lot of types of support for wherever you might be in any particular moment. And it also means that help is never far away. You know, we have a whole calendar of trainings and coaching calls, and there are calls about general sales coaching and calls about LinkedIn and calls about tech and operations, and you're never more than a day away from some type of live support to help you. And lastly, it means that my team and I are going to be right there with you more than in any other program. We're going to stay super close to you and your success and your progress, and make sure that you are clear that you have what you

Leah Neaderthal23:53

need and you're moving forward right. So you'll never be alone in this program. You'll never be sort of flailing or wondering what to do or wondering if you're in the right place, you'll never be alone. So we talked about the content of the Academy, we talked about the coaching, and the last part is really the community. This community is amazing. If you've ever worked with me in any of the programs, you know that the women of this markets paid community are unbelievable. This community is made up of smart, ambitious women running real businesses, like real ass businesses, and supporting one another. They're supportive, they are kind, they are generous with their knowledge. I mean, I've never seen a community like this anywhere on the internet. Like I said, I've been doing this for quite some time. This is not your standard, like air quotes, like women entrepreneur or like FEM preneur community, or whatever. This is like real women running real B to B consulting and coaching businesses who are also like you, committed to growing them because, you know, listen, if there's one thing we've learned in the last two years, it's that we need connection. Even a total introvert like me needs connection, and we need each other, and this community is where women are made. Connections that really boost them up when they're up, pick them up when they're down, and share generously of their knowledge and experience. It's really amazing to watch. So between the Attract guide, close framework, providing the coaching to help you be successful, and this community of support in the academy, I finally feel like I'm back to solving the problem that I really see in the world. And if you're interested in learning about the academy, head to smart gets paid.com/academy and take a look and see if it sounds like something you could benefit from in your business. If it is, then just apply and answer a few quick questions and you'll be invited to a conversation with Mandy Miller on my team, who's awesome. You'll love her. And together, you guys are just going to chat about where you are, what's going on in your business, and see if we can help. So that's smart. Gets paid.com/academy All right, so I hope that something I've shared here today has given you a little bit of clarity, or at least let you know that you're not alone if you are thinking about and wondering and toying with what's the way that I want to solve the problem I see in the world. So Here's to new beginnings and Happy New Year. Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients, and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence and how to get paid for your value, not your time, and there's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy, and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai