Update + Behind the scenes

Leah Neaderthal0:00

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 welcome to this week's episode. How are you I hope you're having a great week. Wherever you are. It's a fun week over here. My son is turning two this week, which I cannot believe he is such a little nugget, and I can't believe, like all the things he can do now, he just learned to count so he can count to 20. Well, I mean, kind of count to 20 everything after 11 is little iffy, but you know, he's trying, and if you work with me, you'll probably see him on a call coming up, so maybe he'll grant us the favor of counting for us. So I want to just start with a little housekeeping here, because we're going to do a little change of direction in the podcast, and just so I don't bury the lead, I'm going to start doing the podcast every other week, but I want to share why I'm doing it, because it sheds a little light on how my business runs, and really how I'm making decisions right now. So when I launched this season of the podcast, well, okay, actually, let's, let's just back up here. When I started the podcast from the beginning, the idea of a podcast really freaked me out. I've said before that it took me about 16 months from the day that I announced it to the day that I actually launched it. And that wasn't just pandemic time. That was, you know, some real time there where I was just procrastinating and feeling a lot of resistance because the idea of doing what a lot of podcasts do, signing up to do one episode a week forever just felt really daunting, like I'll only do something if I can do it in what feels like a sustainable way, like working out, for example, I don't want to do like a big boot camp, because I know I'll probably never be able to sustain that level of energy forever. I'd much rather sign up for, like, doing two days on one day off, kind of thing, right? With working out. So the idea of doing a podcast every week, like, what if I got behind, what if I didn't have anything to say? I mean, I send out a newsletter every week, and I post on LinkedIn at least four or five times a week, and somehow that didn't scare me, but doing a podcast freaked me out, so just committing to that level of activity and a whole new medium like really made me nervous. And one of the things I talked to my students about is removing the blocks to get started. So I figured out that if the weekly thing was a mental block, then I should just not commit to every week, but instead do it in a season with, like, a specific start and end date, like a TV show. So as you know, if you've been listening, I launched it in the format of a season. Season One had 12 episodes and then a surprise bonus episode at the end, and now we're in season two. So take all of that and just sort of put it over to one side, all right. Like, hold that. Over there, right there. The podcast side, okay, completely separately to over on this other side. Here, my team and I started doing our planning for the next year. And to help us, I asked my friend Megan Flatt to lead us through a strategic planning session. And you might remember I've mentioned Megan before because some of the episodes that you've heard come from when I was a guest coach in her program. If you want to go back and listen to those, find the one about ghosting, and then the one just before this about getting ahead of clients drying up. Anyway, Megan's secret business genius is planning and strategy. PS, if you want to work with someone on planning and strategy and planning your time and planning what your next year is going to look like, reach out to Megan at let's collective.com She's amazing. Anyway, before our strategic planning session, she sent me a bunch of questions to think about and answer, just in terms of like, what I want my next year to look like, what I want it to look like for me, for my business, for my team, and in writing the answers to those questions, I had this huge epiphany that I want to share with you. So one of the ways I help women is I offer courses as you know, if you've heard me mention them on this podcast, or you've visited smart gets paid.com I have my course signed where you learn how to sell and charging. Paid more and master the sales process and all of that. And my course called pack your pipeline, to learn how to use LinkedIn to get clients coming to you. And a couple other smaller courses, the painkiller workshop and roadmap to clients and for signed and pack your pipeline, I offered those courses in a live format couple times a year, for pack your pipeline. For example, you can actually sign up at any time and do it on your own. And we also do a live version called the pack your pipeline accelerator, that happens a few times a year. And then I also offer my program signed a couple times a year. So what this means, though, is that several times a year, my team and I are doing a launch. And like, I don't mean a launch as in, I'm starting something totally new. I mean a launch, as in a whole bunch of activity to promote this program. And it's a ton of activity. It takes several weeks of focused work. It's like an all hands on deck, coordinated set of activities that involves my entire team and me, and it's content creation, it's a live training, it's a lot, and it's exhausting, to be totally honest. And when you're launching anywhere from like six to eight times a year, it's really exhausting. Not only that, when we're in launch mode, as we are, often we're preparing for a launch, or actually in a launch, I don't have the space to be creative or try new things. And you know, of course, we've been doing all of this on top of like the pandemic, on top of life, all of that. So when I was thinking about the questions that Megan had asked me about how I want my next year to look, I wrote this actual line. I read you exactly what I wrote to her. So I said, for the past three years, I've done anywhere from six to nine launches a year, which is exhausting, and I don't have the space to be creative and do things that enrich my audience, because I'm always launching the fireside chats are a great example. This feels like enriching content, but we have to squeeze it in between launches, because we can't talk about the upcoming fireside chat while we're in a launch. So side note, you guys, these fireside chats are these Live, Virtual discussions I have with experts about topics that aren't necessarily about business, but which affect every women business owner, things like going gray and food and body issues anyway. But I digress. And then here's the kicker in my answer to Megan, and just picture me. I'm like, sitting on my couch, and as I'm typing these words, I'm having this actual epiphany, like as I'm writing it, I wrote The podcast is also enriching content. I started it in the quote, unquote season format, because the idea of committing to one podcast a week forever made me nervous. But now I'm realizing that, because of the season format, even that is on a launch cycle, I'm definitely thinking that that needs to get off the season format and be more of a regular thing, all right, so that's what I shared with Megan. And really what it means is I realized that in doing the podcast as a season that requires a launch too. It's kind of like a movie premiere like anything else, if you're going to do it right, you have to tell people about it. You have to get people excited. You have to tell them it's arrived, right? You have to coordinate all the touch points so that all of your communications touch points are all working together. It's really another launch. So when offering my programs and then creating my podcast as seasons, I accidentally set myself up to have to do a few more launches a year on top of the launches we're already doing. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and was because it allowed me to get this podcast out and to you, but I've learned since then, and I've had this epiphany, so it's a good time to change. And the last reason why I'm going to every other week is just fucking burnout. I've been talking a lot about burnout because first, I've been feeling super burned out with, you know, the pandemic and moving and the renovation and life with a toddler and running a business, and I've been sharing what I've done to identify the burnout, what I've been doing to repair and to restore myself, and then to prevent burnout in the future. If you haven't seen those, check out my LinkedIn posts and in last week's episode. And of course, if we're not connected yet on LinkedIn, be sure to go there after this and

Leah Neaderthal9:00

connect with me. And I've also been talking about it because I've been hearing it from every single woman business owner I talk to. We are all feeling some degree of burnout, and I want to be transparent. I don't want to be somebody who pretends that everything is like roses and rainbows over here, or ignores the reality that we're all facing. Because when you see other people only focusing on the good, well, a, it's not true. And B, when you're sitting there feeling burned out in your own life, and you see someone else only talk about the good in theirs, it just makes you feel like you're doing something wrong when you're actually not. So the real God's honest truth is that doing this podcast every other week is a decision that lets me continue to share it with you and share the things that I want to share with you in a way that's sustainable right now. Over the last 18 months, I have definitely been guilty of like living in a pandemic, but taking on things as if I'm not. In a pandemic, as if it's still the before times when I could take on a ton and that's a really easy trap for me to fall into, because I want to do all the things you probably do too. But this pandemic is not going away anytime soon, sadly. So my task for myself and I know for a lot of us, is to make decisions based on the reality of right now. So that's why, after this episode, we're going to go to every other week ongoing, and I'm looking at the episodes that are coming up, you know, I do my episode planning in an air table, and I'm looking at the next ones that are slated and they are awesome. Just over the next few episodes, you're going to listen in on calls about what happens when you work in a conservative field and you feel like you can't do something a little unconventional and tell your clients about it. You're going to hear a woman who wants to get better at closing and asking for the business, and you're going to hear a conversation about everyone's favorite topic, pricing, and I can't wait to share those with you. So just real quick, if there's a decision that you've made for yourself or for your business, kind of like the one I'm sharing here, where you know it was a difficult decision, but necessary, just given where things are right now, send me a message about it on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear about it. All right, thanks again for tuning in and being with me on this journey, and I'll see you in two weeks. 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