Three big lessons from 50 episodes

Leah Neaderthal0:02

Hey, so this is the 50th episode of the podcast. So today I'm sharing the biggest lessons that I've learned from doing 50 episodes. So even if you don't have a podcast, or ever even plan to have one, there are nuggets in here that I know you can apply to your consulting business. All right, let's go Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting 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 the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, 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 thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey. So thank you once again for joining me in this episode, I hope that wherever you are, wherever you are listening to this, you are having a good week, making good progress on your business, and, of course, taking some time for yourself. So you guys, this is my 50th episode. It like blows my mind. I cannot even believe that I've done any episodes, much less 50 episodes. And so I wanted to just take this time and share with you some of the lessons that I've learned from doing 50 episodes of this podcast, and I'm also going to share how you can apply them to your consulting business, because even if you don't have a podcast, or ever even plan to have a podcast. The things that I've learned that I'm sharing here are also helpful for your consulting business, and this has been a real journey for me. You know, both professionally and personally, even starting this episode, if you listen to some of the earlier episodes, you know that I announced that I was going to start a podcast in November 2019 but I didn't actually do it until March of 2021 and that's like 16 months, you guys. And of course, in that time, a pandemic happened, right? But I can't blame it all on a pandemic, because the truth is that there was a lot of just head trash going on in my head that told me that I wasn't ready, then I couldn't do it. I kind of just told myself that, like, I didn't know what I was doing, that I would get on the mic and not have anything to say, or that I'd sound really dumb, which is like my biggest fear, and honestly, I don't know what waiting 16 months was gonna do to make me feel like I'd have something to say. But anyway, that's how head trash works, right? Like it doesn't make sense. This is something I talk about in episode 14, which was the bonus episode. I had to get some coaching. I had to get some help from someone I admire. Who could, you know, get me over that roadblock. My former client and friend, Jessica Zweig, who's an incredible personal branding guru and consultant, and she helped me sort of quiet some of that head trash and, you know, get me through that sticking point, which was a very long sticking point. But anyway, if you haven't checked out that episode, go find episode 14. I think it's called, Leah gets coached right where I turn the mic on myself, and you hear me get coached through like, that specific roadblock. But it all sort of like bubbles up to I didn't feel ready, and that's kind of the first lesson that I want to share with you about being ready. And let's just pause. I'm gonna take, like, a hard left turn here, because I read something several months ago that really kind of ties in here. But I know

Leah Neaderthal4:06

it's gonna sound super random, but like, I'm gonna bring it back, I promise. Which is, I read a book about potty training, and if you're a parent, or if you are around parents of toddlers, and if there's one thing that, like a lot of people, just also don't feel ready for and aren't sure if their kids are ready for it's potty training. And there's like a whole canon of literature about readiness for potty training, or whatever, all the mommy blogs, all the books, what have you. But in the book that I read about it, the author makes a really good comparison about potty training that actually kind of applies here to the podcast and to your work too. She says there's a difference between being ready and being capable. So in potty training, according to this author, you know, a lot of parents are waiting until their kids are ready to potty train, but like, how do you know if you're ready to do something that you've never. Ever done before, and especially if you're two and a half or three years old, and you don't even have a concept of, like, what this whole potty training thing is, right? You don't. There's no good way to know if you are ready. But in her opinion, and in her approach, you don't wait until they're ready. You do it when they're capable. In her approach, you know if your kid is capable of arguing a point or negotiating or pushing back, or, you know, all of these things they're capable of understanding, and, you know, learning how to use the potty. Okay, so enough potty training. Talk back to the podcast in the run up to this, as I was thinking about it, I was dragging my feet and, you know, oh so coincidentally, prioritizing other things because I thought I wasn't ready, but I absolutely was capable. So now that I have some language around this, right, this distinction between capable and ready, it's given me a new way to look at, you know, not just this podcast, but a lot of things in my business and actually in my life. So take this podcast even the, you know, week by week, recording of it, right? I would love to be able to record every episode in a perfectly quiet space with my portable recording shields that my brother and sister in law got me, you know, without anything else in the space going on when I'm in a perfect frame of mind. I mean, sounds great, right? That's when I would actually feel my most ready to record. But like that never happens, right? But now, even though I may not feel ready, I know that I'm capable, so I'll set up anywhere, right, like I've recorded late at night with a towel draped over a chair. I've done it with, like, literally, a piece of wood as my table. I've recorded when there's a very noticeable ticking noise in the background from the radiator in our apartment, which is like a pre war building with these radiators. We live on a really busy street now with a lot of street noise, and I'm okay recording now when you know there's street noise around, and I've recorded when I have, like a towel draped over a computer monitor to block the sound, because again, I know that I might not feel ready, but I am capable. And also, you know, other things in my life, right, like working out, if I don't have an hour, like, I would want, right? Say I have, like, 40 minutes or so, and, you know, maybe I don't feel like I drank enough water, or, like, the perfect amount, you know, so I can have my best workout, then I might not feel ready to work out, right? And in the past, I wouldn't have done it. That would have kept me from working out. But now, even though I don't feel ready, I know I am capable. So actually, with this mindset, I've been able to work out more. So I want to share this framework with you, too, because if you're resisting something, right, you're resisting doing something, or you're procrastinating, or you're like, finding other more important things to do instead because you don't feel ready, then ask yourself, I may not be ready, but am I capable? And I think you'll find that you can move forward and do the thing that you've been resisting. So that's the first big thing I've learned from doing 50 episodes of the podcast, capable versus ready. The second thing I've learned is I've learned really to show up as myself. And this has been really, really hard for me to learn, but over time, it's gotten easier. So I talked to a lot of my clients about the expertise humanity scale, and it's also come up in previous episodes, and it kind of goes like this, whenever we show up anywhere, whether it's online or in person, we are somewhere on the expertise humanity scale. All right, you can sort of take your hands and make like a little horizontal scale here. So on the one side, there's expertise showing up

Leah Neaderthal8:57

as smart, as capable, as someone who knows what she's talking about. And on the other side, there's humanity, you know, showing up in a more personal way. And for years, I have lived on the expertise side, right? And I know a lot of you have too. I mean, is it any wonder we go to school to be smart, we get good grades, and then we go to college, where we're rewarded for being smart, and then we get into our careers where we're like, paid for our smarts, and then we start our businesses, and we kind of like, just keep going on that track, right? So like, is it any wonder that, after years of being basically, like, trained to show up on that expertise side of the scale, no wonder we just sort of keep going, right? No wonder I kept going. But what I've come to understand as I've run my business, is that showing up only on the expertise side is fine for demonstrating what we need to demonstrate, right, that we're smart and capable, but it actually keeps people from seeing who you really are, and that can have some. Impacts on your business. And so like, even though I knew I knew that, right, I knew I should show up more on the humanity side, like in theory, it was really hard for me to do in practice, because, like you, I've always felt valued for my smarts, right? Like it's in the name of the company, right? Smart gets paid. And I felt like if I showed up as myself, Well, for one thing, I thought that you could only show up on the expertise side or only show up on the humanity side. So I thought that if I showed up not as an expert, right, not in my smarts, well, you know, for one, people wouldn't think I was smart, and also they might not like me. And I really have to credit two people for showing me that it's not all or nothing, that there is that scale of expertise and humanity, and they really helped me move from all expertise into more of that middle zone. First you heard me mention my former client and friend, Jessica Zweig, and also one of my team members, Shiley hakimian, who has an incredible way of showing up just unapologetically as herself, which is incredible. And she's continually for the past few years that we've worked together, encouraged me to show up as myself and really show up on more of that humanity side. She has been such an incredible cheerleader to me, and now she does the same thing with members of the academy, where she's encouraging them to show up as themselves too. So I have to thank shyly for that. So this podcast has been an exercise in moving from all expertise more to the humanity side of that expertise, humanity scale. And honestly, like, when I first started the podcast, I thought that would be, like, the least interesting part of the podcast, right? Because obviously I thought, if you're listening to a podcast about how to get clients, you know, I kind of assumed that you really only want to hear the learning and like what to do and the strategies and stuff, right? But I have been so pleasantly surprised and really humbled by the response to the things that I am sharing with you as I pull myself over to the humanity side. So, like, one time, I spoke for a group of women attorneys who want they were asking, like, how my son was doing, and they wanted to send him a toy, because they heard me talk about him on the podcast, and they did, like you guys, they sent him the best gifts I've had women ask, you know, how it's been since I moved back to Brooklyn, and talk about how stressful moving has always been for them. And then someone joined the academy recently. And as we were emailing about, you know, some of the details she sent me this email, I'm going to read it verbatim. She said the main reasons why I'm interested in your program. And then four bullet points for women, for consultants focused on sales skills and systems and wraparound support for participants. And just side note, I mean, that's all stuff that's like on the website, right? And then she goes on through listening to your podcast, since episode one, I've learned more about you, some reasons why I'm interested in working with you specifically, and then you guys this list like blew my mind. She said, you nerd out on books and theory and find ways to apply that to real life. You're open about loving your children, but also loving to work. You talk about how fantastic your wife is. You hate Trump and love RBG. You love living in the city, you're trying to reduce spending money with companies like Amazon and trying to buy more locally or buy small and you enjoy being active. She says, I identify with so many of these things. So often, some of those things have made me the odd one out, and it's fun, slash refreshing, slash relieving to see those things being true for you, too. And then her email also said, So, how do I sign up, which was like the icing on the cake, because now we get to work together. So how can you apply this to your

Leah Neaderthal13:48

consulting business, to the extent that you can show up as yourself, you know, check in with yourself. Ask yourself, where am I right now on the expertise humanity scale in this moment, right? And can you move a little bit more towards humanity? Because we have to also think about our clients, right? Whether the women that I work with or the clients that you're working with, your clients want to know you, even when you're selling into companies, you're selling into people at those companies. So as you're posting on LinkedIn or writing your newsletter or even having calls with potential clients, let your clients see the real you. Clients want to work with people they like, so give them something to know about you and give them something to like about you. So that's number two, show up as yourself. And the last big thing I've learned from 50 episodes of the podcast, which I've also tried to take into other parts of my business, and which might help you, is you can do it your own way. So I talked about this a few episodes ago, but it's worth, you know, revisiting here, because I think most people, and this might be the case for you, most people, feel like there's one right way to do things, and if you're. Not doing it that way, then you must be doing something wrong. So just take podcasts right? The podcast gurus would tell you to do an episode every week and have on high profile guests so that your guests share your podcast with their audiences. And that's how you get, like, hundreds of 1000s of podcast downloads, right? And that's how you get sponsorships and all of that. And for years, I kind of wrote off a podcast at all because I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do it that way. So this, this podcast, wasn't something I'd even considered. But then one day, I had this thought. I was like, what if I did it a totally different way? Okay, so like going super behind the scenes here, the problem I needed to solve was that there are so many business coaches out there who say they help you get clients, like even copywriters, like everybody and their mother is like, tying their work to helping you get clients, right. But most of those, nearly all of those, are for B to C, not B to B. And when you look deeper, it's like the way they actually help you get the clients is through like writing better emails or better branding or a funnel or whatever, right? And for the women that I work with who are running consulting businesses, you're not going to get clients by great copywriting or by great branding. I mean that will help bring clients to your doorstep. But you're not going to sell a $30,000 project or a $50,000 project or $100,000 project into a business through sending a great email, and you're not going to get clients through an automated funnel, because that's just not how your clients buy. And you know, the way I help you get clients is by helping you sell your services into clients, and like, lead an actual consultative sales process. And so to be totally honest, I was having a hard time really setting myself apart from all the other business coaches out there who say they help you sell but who actually don't right? And I needed a way not to just tell people, but to show people like, Hey, this is what I mean by selling. This is how I help people get clients by, like, real, actual sales process, selling. So one day, I was thinking, like, how do I do that? And a thought hit me, like, what if I created a podcast to do it. But again, like not the podcast format that, like everybody does, because I wanted it to show behind the scenes into the problems that women like you are facing, and not to just tell but show how I solve them. But to do that, you know, the guests had to be anonymous, because they were my real clients. And even, you know, later on, when I added some guests that were named, that weren't anonymous, there are people like authors and professors, because I totally nerd out on that stuff and how you can apply their teachings to business. So I kind of just went against everything that the podcast gurus would tell you to do. But I don't want you to think that, like, once I made that decision, I never felt any pressure to do things the way you're supposed to, because, like, I'm somebody who I read the instructions before I do something, so I know I'm doing it right, like, I want to do things the right way, the way you're supposed to. And that force is, like, very strong in me. And so that tendency reared its ugly head, you know, even when I was thinking about other parts of this, like how often to release the episodes. Because when I was first thinking about starting the podcast, the idea of signing up to do a weekly podcast from like now until eternity, it just freaked me out, like it was definitely one of the reasons why I didn't start the podcast for so long because I just didn't want to sign up for that. But then one day, it sort of hit me. I was like,

Leah Neaderthal18:46

what if I did it in a season, you know, kind of like TV, you know, like a season of 12 episodes, and if it sucks, or if I hate it, I don't have to do a season two. So if you've been listening from the beginning, you might remember that the first episodes were in a season, right? And I was talking about season one, and then there was such a great response that I did season two. And then along the way, I remember thinking, Oh, my God, this is what I was afraid of, right? Like, this is what I was afraid would happen. Am I going to have to do a every week podcast, even in seasons, right? Am I going to have to do this forever, until the end of time. And then as I was kind of mulling it over, this thought hit me. It sort of came to me that said, you can do it every other week. It was like, this voice from somewhere else, and like, even as I'm saying it now, like, you know, realizing that you can do a podcast every other week instead of every week. Like, it doesn't sound groundbreaking. This is not groundbreaking stuff, but again, when you're somebody like me who tends to want to follow the rules that thought of you know, you can do it every other week, that was like an instant mindset shift for me. Honestly, it was instant relief, and I felt like I could go forward with a manageable schedule that lets me. Do the podcast and serve my clients without having to take on too much and burn myself out. So as time has gone on and I've been doing this podcast, that mindset shift has morphed from I can do this my way to how do I do this my way? And I have to credit shyly on my team again, who's always asking me, how can we leify this, which is such a great reminder to me. And so instead of just being an option of how we could do things, it's become a pillar of how we do do things. So for you, as you're listening to this, remember that you can do things your own way, whatever mechanism you choose, whatever strategy you use, just because you see people out there doing things one way, remember that you're in charge of your business, and you can do things your way. And not only that, you know, how do you leafy things for yourself? Right? So, how do you angelify Or Megan PHY or, of course, you know, insert your own name, right? Just to make sure that you're doing things your way with your personality, and that works for you, and I promise that once you give yourself permission to do that, things get a lot more fun. All right, so those are the three big things I've learned from doing 50 episodes. Oh, my God, 50 episodes of this podcast. First, you may not feel ready, but you're definitely capable. Second, the expertise humanity scale. And third, not only can you do things your own way, but you must do them your own way. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Whether this is your first episode, or you've been listening the whole time. Thank you for sharing it with the women business owners in your life. Thank you for posting it on your social media and for sharing your favorite episodes, and just for spreading the word. And I want to send an especially heartfelt thank you to my clients who have allowed me to share our conversations with you as podcast episodes, I am so grateful that you have helped and inspired so many women who are listening, and thank you to my team who has supported me every step of the way, who has called me on my shit, helped me get out of my own way, and really cheered this podcast on. Thank you so much, and I'll see you in a couple weeks for another episode of the smart gets paid podcast. 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. Transcribed by https://otter.ai