Balancing personal responsibility with professional reliability (AKA: how responsible are you for your clients’ success?)

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]
You have to have the right fit client being attracted to and when brought into your work, in order for them to succeed, you actually cannot make your client succeed even if you are doing done for your work. I don’t care who you are. What kind of work you do our job as business owners is not to make our clients succeed. Only they can do that. Our job is to create the conditions within which our clients can succeed.
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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]
I’ve recently been thinking about a kind of broad conversation that is popping up in more and more and more corners of the online business industry. And frankly, I am thrilled by this being a more and more common conversation. This conversation is, how do we balance or perhaps even blend our responsibility as business owners with the responsibility that our clients have inside of our programs or with our work, et cetera. Basically, where is the line? And specifically when it comes to client success, how much is your responsibility as the business owner? And how much is the client’s responsibility? When you do your work long enough, you will soon find that you are saying a lot of the same things over and over and over and this definitely isn’t a bad thing. In fact, I personally see it as a really great thing because it kind of means that you’re finding your things. Now, there are a ton of things that I say repeatedly. I mean, you all have heard me say the whole K moto look external for ideas and internal for answers. Hopefully a million and one times you’ve all heard the whole code definition of sustainable success, getting paid really freaking well to do the work you most love doing in the way you most love doing it with the people you most love working with. But there are three things that I say repeatedly, mostly within my work, truth be told that are specifically related to this question on responsibility for success. So I want to talk about them more here. These three things that I say over and over and over. They are number one, our job as coaches, service providers, healers, course creators whatever you are, our job is not to make our clients succeed, but to create the conditions within which they can succeed. Number two, let adults make adult decisions. And number three, build your business your way. The people who know me well, know that I am a huge fan of New Orleans, which is why I want to talk about each of these three statements in the broader context of client success and specifically in terms of business owner, responsibility versus client responsibility. Let’s talk about that first one, create the conditions within which your clients can succeed. Now, when I say this, it’s always kind of as I said before, like our job is to create the conditions within which they can succeed, not to make them succeed because only your client can actually succeed. It’s the whole classic idea of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink you really when you’re doing any work, I don’t care if it’s done for you work or coaching work or whatever it is. When you’re doing any work, you do actually kind of have to trust that your client is going to do their part in order to succeed. Again, even thinking like as a done for your service provider, it’s so easy to be like, no, like I’m doing the work. So I’m the one who has to make the client succeed. But think about it, there are literal pieces of you doing the work that you cannot control whether or not it’s going to work. Let’s say you’re a copywriter and your client gives you maybe some like kind of core messaging, but they did themselves or that they gave to somebody else to do for them, whatever it is. And so they have that messaging that was delivered by someone else. And now you’re taking that messaging and writing a sales page for one of their offers. There are several things that you cannot do that would be required in order for this to succeed. You didn’t create that messaging. So you don’t know whether that’s exactly what it needs to be or not. Or even if you’re like, well, I’m a copywriter Carly who also does messaging. Ok, great. That’s awesome. But even then even if you have done all of the kind of, you know, maybe you’ve interviewed clients and you’ve gone through the course itself or whatever it is that you’re writing a sales page for no matter how much work you have done. If your job is to create the copy for the sales page, you still cannot make sure that that sales page succeeds because you’re not making sure that the client markets the offer and gets eyes on the sales page. You’re not making sure that the client sales process is set up to actually take qualified leads into the work. You actually cannot make your client succeed, even if you are doing done for your work. This is why I don’t care who you are, what kind of work you do. Our job as business owners is not to make our clients succeed. Only they can do that. Our job is to create the conditions within which our clients can succeed. And when I say this, I I do mean something that’s actually quite comprehensive. Like literally, we create the conditions within which our clients can succeed by building and then continually refining every single one of the six elements of our sustainable success system. For example, the six elements, audience offer messaging, marketing, lead generation and sales all kind of bound together under the umbrella of self trust. So audience you have to have the right fit client being attracted to and when brought into your work, in order for them to succeed, there are four foundations of a right foot client. But even if one of them is off, that could actually harm that client’s potential for success. One of those foundations of a right foot client is that they are best positioned to succeed. So this is basically like, what do they already have in place to be able to empower them to succeed? If we’re using that copywriter example, then that person who is going to be best positioned to succeed with a copywriter tends to already have an offer that they’re really solid in that is getting great results that they know how to sell, how to mark typically the person who is best positioned to succeed with a copywriter is already having success on their own. And they’re bringing a copywriter in to essentially put fuel onto that fire. Or if you’re a sales coach and you bring clients into your work who have this kind of primary belief about sales, that it’s icky and manipulative. Then not only are you going to have to then educate this client on how to sell effectively, which is your job? That is what you do. But you’re also going to have to educate them on why sales and selling is ok and why it’s not a bad thing, why it’s actually an act of service and on and on and on and this sort of like convincing, it’s ok to sell, I promise you, it’s a good thing to sell. That convincing to try and meet this person’s core belief that sales and selling is icky and manipulative. That’s not your job. And actually that makes your job harder, your best position to succeed client as a sales coach, they might have some kind of residual yuck around sales. But they’re coming to you from the mindset of, I want to learn how to sell in a way that actually feels really good, which says that they, even if they have that kind of residual yuck around sales, they know already that there’s another option and now they’re just looking for like the specific way to do the other option they’re not coming to you because they’re like, oh, I hate sales and selling. But I don’t know, I read this book and it says that I need to learn how to do this or I was having this conversation with another business owner and they said I need to figure out how to sell or I want to just be able to outsource this. So yada, yada yada like that person is not best positioned to succeed. If you bring a client into your work who is not best positioned to succeed, then it’s really hard to create the conditions within which they can succeed. And now you’re gonna have to find yourself kind of stepping outside of your lane and doing a whole bunch of extra things just to help this person succeed. That’s not your job or another foundation of audience just to kind of keep going on this here is that their physiologically ready to transform. So let’s say you’re like a life coach and you use tools like shadow work or hypnotherapy or inner child work and you bring clients in whose intention for coming into your work is that they want you to fix them. That right there is such a clear sign that this person is very likely not physiologically ready to transform that right there means that they’re kind of more in this like escape mentality like everything is bad. My life sucks. I just need someone to like pull me out of this rather than an expand mentality. Hey, things have been hard, but I’m ready to do something different. Let’s continue talking about this in relation to this life coach. When you bring a client into your work, who is not physiologically ready to transform, then what often happens is that you accidentally will either end up creating an unhealthy relationship with the client where now you’re kind of like their guru and they truly believe that they need you in order to be ok, which might feel good for a moment, but also like is going back to them thinking that you are responsible for their success. And now also if they do not succeed, then that’s your fault too. And it just creates this whole kind of messy space as well, very disempowered energy or what could end up happening is that you’re going to do all the things that are in your power to do to help this client. But even with your phenomenal work, because they came into your work, wanting you to fix them, they’re much more likely to stay stuck where they are or to maybe have a breakthrough but not experience a true lasting transformation. The people who are capable of experiencing true lasting transformations that then continue naturally deepening more and more and more are those who are in an empowered physiology, a state of knowing that they are capable of change, that they are capable of doing something different and experiencing different results. Yeah, sure. They want help but they know that they have that power in themselves and they’re bringing in support or help maybe to help catalyze or to see things that they know that they can’t see whatever it is. Doesn’t matter. As long as they’re not coming from. Fix me, please heal me, save me. I can’t do this right. Or if we look at another one of the elements of your sustainable success system, your offer, your offer or offers have to be set up to guide that client from where they are to where they want to be in everything from actual offer, inclusions to price point and more. If we are creating the conditions within which our clients can succeed, we have to be thinking about all of these details of, you know, timing or of price point or of do you include vox or support in between coaching sessions? You have to be thinking about all of the different pieces of your offer or offer suite and how they are meeting your right fit person where they are and equipping them, guiding them, supporting them to create the result or the transformation that they desire to create. Same with your messaging, same with your marketing, same with your lead generation, same with your sales processes, everything that you are doing in your business, you do have a responsibility to use all of them to create the conditions within which your clients can succeed. I have an example of this. I’m gonna bring it all together in a little bit, but I wanna move into the next piece here. Another thing that I often can be found saying is that we need to let adults make adult decisions and this is where things come to like really require a bunch of new ones because yes, you do need to create the conditions within which your clients can succeed. But also you need to let adults make adult decisions. And again, this is irrelevant to each of those six elements of your sustainable success system. For example, in your audience offer and messaging, which are kind of more like the back end elements of your sustainable success system. If you take a look at our everything page on our website, we actually lay out general guidelines for who we have found to be best suited to each of our programs or each of our core programs anyway. But then we also say if you have read through all of the information on our offers and you feel that you’re best suited to something outside of our recommendations, we trust you because you’re the one who knows what’s right for you. For example, I had a client a couple of years ago who was in one of my programs that was for kind of newer business owners and she herself was a newer business owner. I think she’d only been in business for somewhere between 6 to 12 months. But I was starting this other offer that was kind of for more established business owners. And she basically was like, I think I need to be in that and I actually kind of pushed back. I was like, I don’t know, I don’t think that it’s right for you. I was very clear with that with her, but she said no, like I need to be in that offer. That’s actually what I’m looking for and here’s why. And so I had a choice as a business owner, do I get to trust her or do I get to stick with what at that point, kind of felt like much more rigid boundaries around who is best suited to what kind of thing? I read her, you know, reasons for why she felt she needed to be in that offer. And ultimately, I was like, ok, and I let her into that offer, it turned out to be a great thing. It was awesome. Like she was totally right. I was wrong. And so of course, while having like boundaries in place and while being able to say who is and isn’t a right fit for different offers, we also get to trust adults to make adult decisions and we get to trust that they know better than we do sometimes. And that’s ok because they are them, we are not them. We don’t know all of the factors that are in place that could say whether or not they are truly a right fit for something or not trusting adults to make adult decisions, also bleeds into the more forward facing elements of our sustainable success system, our marketing, our lead generation or sales, for example, for the first few years of selling expand, it was actually by application only. So you had to fill out an application to join expand a few months ago, we actually removed that requirement. And I’ll be honest, that was really terrifying for me to do it first because it was kind of this thing of, you know, this container has felt very sacred for a few years. It’s been application only. So I’ve had complete control truthfully on who comes in or who doesn’t come in. And when I removed that application, it was this moment of oh baby, like I hope that someone doesn’t join this is a total wrong fit or what if this happens? What if that happens? You know, all of these kind of swirling ideas and questions and all of that. And at that point, I had to recognize, you know, I’ve done and am doing everything that I can to attract in the right fit person. I’ve been as clear as I can on the sales page in our sales emails in pretty much like everywhere that I talk about it, I feel like I’m doing everything that I can that I know how to do to ensure that I am attracting a right fit person. I’m also as part of that, I am continually refining what we were doing. I’m continually checking in. I’m continually like nuancing it more and more and more so that I can be even more confident that we’re bringing right fit people in. But I did have to kind of come to this realization of, you know, I get to trust that I’ve done my bit here and I get to trust adults to make adult decisions. I don’t have to have the final stamp of approval on every single person that comes in. I can trust that if someone decides to buy it, they’ve done their bit, they’ve done their research, they have actually read the things that I am saying about who is the right fit or not. And I get to trust that they are making an investment decision that is right for them. Now, I do believe that we have some very specific responsibilities as business owners specifically in those forward facing elements like marketing, lead generation and sales. So I’m going to share what those are in a moment. But finally, we have this third statement that I think really connects in, although not as directly with this question that we’ve been asking here of basically again, where is the line, right? How do we balance or blend our responsibility as business owners with the responsibility that our clients have inside of our program with our work in our containers again, whatever that it looks like specifically for you. And this third statement is build your business your way, which actually is basically just a very short way of saying the definition, the whole code definition of sustainable success, which again is getting paid really freaking well to do the work that you most love doing in the way that you most love doing it with the people you most love working with. When I say something like this, like build your business your way, I totally know that that could be taken to mean we just do things how you wanna do them. And in a sense, it does mean that so long as we’re not doing things how we want to do them at the expense of client success. And I think that this is kind of the big theme here of this whole episode that there is not really a clear like hard line between what our responsibility is and what client responsibility is. But we’re gonna kind of keep nuancing this here together. When I say build your business your way, we are using what we as the business owner want as our direction. But then we get to kind of put the puzzle pieces together within that direction to discover how we can deliver our work in a way that we are truly excited to deliver it. But also in a way that reliably facilitates client results. For example, when I transitioned, expand from a high four figure, even low five figure live group program that had multiple weekly live sessions to now a step by step curriculum led comprehensive business training program. I made that decision to make this very drastic shift for lots of reasons. But the biggest reason that I made that shift that’s at least relevant to this conversation is because I knew that I wanted the price point of expand to better match the current lived experience of who the right fit client for expand is I made this decision back at the beginning of 2023 that I actually wanted to start pricing all of our programs at a maximum of 10% of what the average client for that program is currently making in their business. So I kind of call this the 10% rule and this is probably not something that can be adopted to all sorts of different industries. But I think because our business coach helping people specifically with their businesses, it works here. But our expanders, for example, are on average making 30,000 to about 50,000 in annual revenue when they very first join expand. Now, of course, we’ve had some people who are exceptions to that. People who, you know, are actually making no money yet. We’ve had people who are making, I think like 80 to 90 K already when they have joined expand. So of course, there’s exceptions but that 30 to 50 K range is again kind of the average of where our clients for expand currently are in their business. So I knew I want to be able to lower this price point, which then meant that I had to figure out that’s the direction. So how do I lower the price point while still allowing this to be sustainable for me? But also while still delivering a very high caliber of work and maybe even a higher caliber of work is that even possible, these are the questions that were going to the right brain. So in order to bring that price point down, quite significantly, again, it was 8 to 12 K, just depending on a few different things, but it was about 8 to 12 K. So that’s like a big investment, right? In order to bring that investment down to be 10% of that 30 to 50 K, the average of what our client is making before they step in to expand, then I had to revisit what actually was included in the offer. One thing I’ve been noticing, for example, in the previous version of expand is that we had very frequent live group coaching support. I think it was almost weekly. Well, it was weekly, but I think we had like a week off every month or something like that. It’s been a while now. So I can’t fully remember. I probably should have looked back. But I’ve noticed that people were often using this really frequent live group coaching as like the core of expand rather than moving through the trainings. Now, this wasn’t a huge problem like, you know, that’s fine come get coaching. I love doing coaching support. But I also at the same time, had really built out a beautifully comprehensive training library and I needed people to be moving through the training library actively in order to build out each of the foundations of their sustainable success system. But and this is just, you know, kind of an accident that I had to experience to realize needed to be shift. But I was noticing that people were coming to group coaching, not having prioritized the trainings, but instead just prioritizing getting the coaching that’s fine. But I knew that they could actually be getting even more value and be seeing even more reliable results if they move through the trainings. So I decided when I was deciding to move the price point down quite significantly to actually decrease the amount of live group coaching and doing so served a dual purpose. One, it put more responsibility on the clients to move through the trainings. And it actually centered and prioritized the thing that I knew they actually needed to be able to succeed and get the results of the program. But also it had this other purpose that was super useful to me and super helpful to me. And that was, it helped me not have to be on as much anymore. Like I didn’t have to be like completely just in good health all the time, ready to serve a client all the time as I had to be when there was such frequent live group coaching. This is a huge blessing actually, because little did I know that mere months after I made this decision, I would kind of have this like huge moment of my body deciding Carly, let’s pay attention to all of the physical health things that have ever happened in your life and a whole bunch of things started happening. But frankly, I’m still working through, but that’s a different story. But with this lessening or this decreasing of the life coaching, yes, I knew that that was gonna be just this really phenomenal step at putting more responsibility on the clients to move through the trainings. I also knew though that there was going to be a bigger need for accountability and multiple forms of it, right? Anytime you’re doing anything that’s a little bit more like self initiated and less live, then it’s super easy to kind of like fall off or, you know, kind of get distracted or not keep up the momentum. And so when we are making this decision, guided by my desire to decrease the price point. And we were saying, ok, now we’re going to actually decrease the amount of live group coaching that happens. We had to really intentionally increase the amount of accountability that we were offering and not only the amount but the variety of types of accountability that we were offering. So we’ve added in and this is just even a few examples. There’s quite a lot of accountability actually baked into expand, which I’m very proud of. But we added in things like multiple micro email series that are aligned with each module, but follow your pace. So that way it’s not like, you know, you are going through the audience module, but maybe you had vacation so you didn’t finish it. But now we have emails coming out about the offers module. So now you feel behind that doesn’t work because that is just kind of defeating. It really does not help with the accountability. But we have these email sequences that kick off through a beautiful blend of automations and all sorts of things. But that kick off as soon as you actually start whatever the next module is. And these little micro series of just a couple of emails really helped to tap into your intrinsic motivation, your extrinsic motivation and also really help you to get an idea of what to expect in that module so that you actually can plan accordingly and that you actually can feel equipped to take those steps. And it doesn’t feel maybe as scary, maybe like if you’re going into the sales module or something, it’s not like, oh no, what am I gonna find here? It’s like no, here’s what you can expect. So it brings an accountability while also supporting you to take that step in a way that feels good for you. Another form of accountability we’ve added in are module check ins. And these module check ins are basically just like you finish a module before you move on to the next one. You complete a series of, I think it’s about 10 to 15 questions each. And they help you to really reflect on what you just learned and also integrate that information as well so that it’s not just something that’s like living in your head, but it’s now turning into a way of being rather than something that you are doing these module check ins have. It’s been the coolest thing actually, we’ve seen that they inherently on their own provide sort of an intrinsic accountability. So like a accountability from within, it’s not us outside being like, hey, finish this thing because as our clients really start to finish these module check ins, they start to realize, wow, this is so helpful because it helps to really clarify and solidify the things that they’ve learned while also building this really beautiful sense of accomplishment that rises up from within rather than again being something like us being like, hey, congratulations, you finished this thing. But also something that we’ve been doing with these module check ins that I just love and I think have also added a beautiful amount of accountability to expand is that individualized coaching is now, in a sense earned because when a client and expand completes a module check in, I actually read their check in and then give them individual coaching via a video based off of their check in. So now we’re creating both this intrinsic accountability from. Wow, I’m realizing so much, I’m like, you know, really solidifying all the things that I’ve learned simply by answering these questions. But also we’re adding in that extrinsic accountability of if I finish this module check in, I’m going to get that one on one coaching from Carly. Of course, we also have things like incentives like you can finish this and then you get one on one coaching or you finish this and then you get to submit your marketing content for feedback or finish this and you get our graduation gift and we even have optional accountability with a whole co team member where someone actually checks in with you individually every single month and make sure that you’re feeling really good about your progress or helps you get back on track if it feels like you’ve lost a little bit of momentum. Now notice in this example that I let my desires for how I wanted to be building my business, how I wanted to do my work, what price point I wanted to be charging? I let what I wanted dictate the direction, but then the final decisions on what we were including how we were structuring things all of that really came down to how can I merge what I want with, what will actually support my clients and succeeding in or with my work? It would be so easy to just be like, oh having a bunch of live group coaching sessions actually is just, you know, gonna be so valuable for my clients. But the truth was, and the truth is actually when I look at what we were doing before and I look at what we’ve been doing for almost a year now. And I see our clients that are moving through, expand in its current form, the form that is fully about being a comprehensive business training program that is very self initiated. Like you have to decide to step in and do the things in order to get the coaching in order to get whatever the incentives are in order to actually completely build your sustainable success system. This form actually is providing so much more value for our people while also being aligned with my desire to charge less and also my desire to not have to be on all the time, especially as I’ve been dealing with various health challenges, which all of this really brings together the whole, creating the conditions within which my clients can succeed with letting adults make adult decisions with building my business. My way all of this is well and good. I mean, I think we’ve been here for like over 30 minutes, maybe even 40 minutes. So if you’re here, wonderful. I’m so grateful, but I’m sure that you’re thinking, ok, like I get it. But what does all of this look like? Practically? Like, how do I practically blend, taking responsibility as the business owner with making sure that my clients are holding their end of the bargain, right? Making sure that my clients are maintaining their own responsibility for their success. If you really want to learn how to blend these two things, then honestly, like the answer is come work with me. This is a conversation that we have inside of expand all the time or inside of private coach consulting and really any of my larger programs or individual containers. This is something that literally guides everything that we do. But to get you started, I want to share with you seven responsibilities that I myself am committed to carrying specifically around client success. I’m gonna be honest though, as I was planning out this episode, I literally could not stop thinking of responsibilities that I hold myself to. So this list is definitely not comprehensive, but I do hope that you can use it as a starting point. The first responsibility. And I think honestly, in many ways, this is probably like the most crucial. The first responsibility I hold myself to in relation to client success is that I have a responsibility to stay in my lane. I remember earlier on in business, there were moments where I felt like, oh, well, I have to be able to be a copywriter as well as a brand strategist. And I also have to like, help them then create their content. And I have to be able to do all of these different things. And even when I transitioned into being a business coach, there are moments where I was like, oh, well, I have to be able to, to like literally write this person’s sales page in addition to coaching them. And eventually I realized I get to stay in my own lane. Like I get to stay with the things that I’m really good at. I not only get to do that, but I actually have a responsibility to stay in my own lane. I mean, even like way back at the beginning of my time in business when I was a social media manager, I found myself like designing people’s websites and I found myself writing like product descriptions for my product based business owner, clients. Like I was doing so many different things and while I could do all of those things, I actually was best at some of those things. And it would have been more in service of my clients to stay in my lane and say, hey, that’s not actually something that I do and maybe give them a referral if I had one or just say, you know, I would recommend looking for this type of business owner to help you with that again, there was so much kind of like pressure, it seemed external, but truthfully it was internal to be able to do everything. But that doesn’t serve your people, doesn’t serve my people. It doesn’t serve your people. It doesn’t serve anyone’s people because there is probably a very good reason why you chose to do the work that you chose to do and not chose to do whatever other work there is out there. And it’s probably because you are better at the thing that you chose than whatever all the other kind of fringe things that are somewhat related to what you do, but not specifically what you do. So if you really want to serve your client, stay in your lane, do the thing that you actually are good at doing and then refer out for other things. Again, that’s a responsibility. I hold myself to staying in my own lane and it’s a responsibility I invite you to hold yourself to as well. I also have a responsibility to make crystal clear on who my words and work are for and who they’re not for. This is huge. This covers so many different things. This is literally like on a sales page being able to say very clearly. This is for you. If this is not for you, if and not even necessarily in marketing speak, but literally like this is for you. If this, you know, I do not recommend that you take this if this, we need to really practice being very clear with those kinds of things. Because otherwise, if we’re not clear, how do we expect anyone else outside of us to be clear? And again, if we’re trying to create the conditions within which our clients can succeed, that literally starts with making sure that we are bringing the right fit clients into our right for them work, we have to really understand who is best positioned to succeed in a program in a container in whatever it is and who is not. But this responsibility also extends even to things like our content. You know, let’s say I’m creating content where I’m talking about like building our kind of ads to our automated email funnel that I’ve been working on here in HCO. If I’m going to create content, talking about this very automated funnel or really anything automated here at HCO, I mean to be very clear on who actually is ready to be building an automated funnel. My audience is a lot of business owners who are earlier on in business who are still trying to figure out, you know, are still trying to build their audience foundations, offer foundation messaging foundations, marketing lead generation sales. My audience is a lot of people who are building each of those foundations. I have built those foundations years ago at this point and of course, I have been spent all of the years in between now and then continually refining foundations, which means that because I have those foundations, my business is ready to add in things like automated funnels. But if I’m gonna create content, talking about automated funnels, I mean to say if you are a newer business owner or if you are not yet consistently bringing clients in through organic marketing, then you do not want to be adding in automated ads fueled funnels to your business. I know that putting things like that into your content can kind of feel like weird. You know, it’s not something that level of clarity or transparency is not something that I see people doing really much at all in our marketing for online businesses. But think about how easy it is to see someone’s piece of content who hasn’t clarified who that content is for and then to start thinking, oh, maybe I need to do that. I know that happened to me very early on in business where I saw someone talking about how I needed to have this automated client on boarding experience and I had to build it out in Dubsado because Dubsado is the best place. Yada, yada, yada. I couldn’t even tell you like what the person’s name was, who was writing this content. But what I can tell you is that I walked away from their content every time that I saw it thinking, oh man, I don’t have this automated client experience. So my clients are gonna think that I’m you know, not professional or whatever it is. If that business owner had been clear in their content, like, hey, if you aren’t already bringing in consistent clients, then you probably don’t need to be automating your client on boarding experience. If they would have been clear on that, then I wouldn’t have gone through this big, like, time energy money suck that I went through trying to build my client on boarding experience that frankly I then never used because I didn’t actually know how to build it. And I didn’t actually know what needed to be included because at that point in time, I wasn’t bringing in consistent clients, consistent leads. Even we want our people to be able to make informed decisions about investing with us, not investing with us about implementing anything that we say. Because when our people make informed decisions, then they’re not only making those decisions from a much more empowered police, they also are much more likely to be able to benefit from making that decision and to be able to get the result of whatever it is that we are recommending. I was not able to get the result of that on boarding in the subtle person’s work because I didn’t actually have what I needed in place to be able to get that result, which then leads me to, I have a responsibility to build offers that consistently and reliably deliver results. Now, I cannot stress this enough, but this is not just about the offer itself. It’s really about building your entire sustainable success system to be able to work in harmony, to bring right fit people into your right for them work also though you will pretty much never have a 100% success rate. I know it’s so easy to hear things like we have a responsibility to build offers that consistently and reliably deliver results and start thinking, oh my gosh, like I have this one client who didn’t get the result and start like beating ourselves up about that. If that starts coming up for you, I’m gonna actually talk to the perfectionist side of you in just a moment, but just know it is very normal to not have 100% client success. But then also with that kind of our sub responsibility here is to consistently refine our offers, refine our delivery methods, refine how we’re what are doing all of that as we learn more. Every client who doesn’t get the exact result that you promote is an opportunity for you to look at. How can I do this better? How can I make this better for my clients? And therefore that is actually that consistent refining process, how we create those consistent and reliable results? I have a responsibility to be crystal clear in my marketing promises. It is very, very, very popular in our online business world to try and guarantee results or even like not even say you’re guaranteeing results. But kind of even like in our messaging, say if you do this, then you will get this result. That isn’t always the case though, right? I can do everything in my power to facilitate results. But as I was saying earlier, even something that’s done for you, you still only have so much power. So I’m not going to make promises that I actually know that I am not the only one responsible for keeping the other kind of nuance to this responsibility of being crystal clear on our marketing premises is that I’m also not going to use the results that only a tiny fraction of my clients get as the messaging for an offer. I’m not going to say like if one of my clients, let’s say, had a million dollar year, which has not happened yet, but you know, might soon. But let’s say that one of my, let’s say 10 clients, I’ve had much more than that. But we’re just using an example here. If one out of 10 people has had a million dollar a year, I’m not gonna say do this program to have a million dollar year. Not only is that not transparent but using messaging like that is in many ways setting up those other nine clients for perceived failure because they’re gonna feel like I didn’t have that success. I didn’t reach that height of success, which at best just doesn’t feel good as a client. But at worst actually leaves a really bad taste in their mouth and then means that they’re probably not likely to keep working with you. They’re probably likely to not refer to you. They may even start talking not so great about you to people who ask them about you. I believe I have that responsibility to be crystal clear in my marketing promises. And I also hope that you take that responsibility on as well. I have a responsibility to charge what I believe are appropriate price points. Now, I’m not gonna go super in depth on this because I actually published a blog post where I talked about this 10% rule that I mentioned earlier in the year. So if you want to be able to hear more about me talking about price points and how we came to the 10% rule, all of that, feel free to take a look at that blog post. I’ll drop it in the show notes below. I have a responsibility to be clear about where my testimonials and case studies come from. And by that, I mean, what was the context? What did this client already have in place? Was their result actually related to my work or what parts of it were related to my work? What parts of it weren’t related to my work? But also, and I’m sharing testimonials, I truly believe that you need to say this is from this offer unless of course, I’m putting a testimonial say on the expand sales page and that person took expand, I’m not going to be like this person took expand because that’s assumed. But if I’m putting it to so on, let’s say the expand sales page. But it’s actually from a one on one client, then I believe I have a responsibility to say this is from a one on one client because if I don’t say that, then the truth is someone is getting potentially different results because they’re working with me one on one, which also probably means that their business was in a different place before they started working with me. All of that than the average person who is joining expand. So I have that responsibility to be clear about where those testimonials where those case studies came from. Finally, I have a responsibility to be honest and transparent about how long it takes to create the result of my work. In my case, how long it takes to build a thriving and successful business. It’s so funny to me because if we look around the online business industry, so many people are like, there’s no such thing as overnight success. But then a lot of those same people are like my client went from nothing to making a million dollars in zero seconds. And obviously that is an exaggeration. And I know that all of this is about like, how do we position to make things look really, you know, flashy and amazing and all of that. But also even if it’s true that let’s say last month, a client made $0 and this month they’ve made $80,000 then can we add a little bit more context to that? Right. Like, can we actually share what truly made that possible? Can we actually maybe say, you know what? It’s because they actually just had a really bad month that month? But then the next month, they went back to their normal, which before already even working with me, they were making like 60,000. So now they’ve gone to 80,000. Like, can we actually share the real reality to all of this? And so how I take that and I think about, you know, when people come to me, it’s because they want to create sustainable success. Well, if I’m gonna be selling sustainable success, then first of all, I’m not selling overnight success. So I’m really, really, really intentional with how I share like client key studies and testimonials and stuff like really working to not position it as they went from this to this overnight with no work. But if I’m gonna sell sustainable success, then I have to be honest about the fact that one in the way that I talk about sustainable success anyway, you actually can make a shift today and experience sustainable success. But two that doesn’t mean that you suddenly have 20 clients and $100,000 months or whatever it is because sustainable success and how I talk about it is actually about how you feel in your business. And it’s something that continues expanding the further and further and further you go down this path and all of the things that time, freedom, money, freedom, energy, freedom, those are natural by-product, but those are not sustainable success. So if I’m gonna be honest with people about like how long it takes to create sustainable success or to build a business that brings them as much joy as it does revenue, then I’m going to really bring nuance to that conversation and say one, you actually can start building your business to bring in as much joy as it does revenue literally today. But really, this is like a years long process and there’s not an end destination, it’s not, you’re just going to like one day wake up and everything’s gonna be easy. It’s like no, if you really want this ever expanding sustainable success and you want all of the vibe products of that sustainable success, the time, freedom, the energy, freedom, the money, freedom, it’s gonna take some work, right? It’s going to take consistent dedication to the path of building and expanding your sustainable success. So to sum all of that up the responsibilities that I hold for myself, or at least some of the responsibilities that I hold for myself in relation to client success are that I have a responsibility to stay in my lane. I have a responsibility to clarify who specifically I am talking to in my content in my offers in my copy, in my messaging, I have a responsibility to build and sell offers that reliably facilitate results. I have a responsibility to make clear promises. I have a responsibility to charge appropriate price points. I have a responsibility to be clear on where my testimonials and case studies come from and what the context for them is. And I have responsibility to be honest about the real journey of getting the result or transformation of my work. And when I say it out loud, like kind of just feels like this is just great business practices in general. But I hope that as you’ve been listening to this, you’ve been able to really soak in which of these things are ones that you would like to take on as a responsibility for yourself. What would taking on even just one of these responsibilities change or nuance or shift or refine something about how you’re doing your business. Now, before we jump off here today, I told you before I was going to talk to the side of many of us, the kind of perfectionistic side of many of us who are here. And I know that I am a recovering perfectionist. I know that many of my clients are recovering perfectionists as well. So what I really want that part of you to hear here is that you are not ever going to be able to get any of this right from the beginning. And frankly, even if things are like, really, really, really good, like even if most of your clients are getting those really consistent and reliable results, or even if most of the time you are being super clear about who is and isn’t a right fit for your work, you are still not going to be perfect at this. Another thing that you’ll frequently hear me saying, especially in my work with clients is to get it to 70 to 80% done, get your messaging to 70 to 80% done, get your application to work with you to 70 to 80% done. Get the offer structure to 70 to 80% done and then to go start using whatever that thing is that you’ve just built, using it, bringing it out into the world and actually seeing how it lands with you and also how it lands with your audience to then be able to solidify that last 20 to 30% often times it’s only by actually going and doing the thing that you can find the shifts, the nuances, the gaps or any of these other things that maybe need to be remedied, that need to be honed in, that need to even just be made to start with. You are not going to get any of this right, right from the start or really ever, you’re not going to get all of this right ever. But you’re also not going to get all of this right, right. From the start, you get to start with what you have, start where you are and then continue experimenting, continue staying curious, continue watching how things are working to see what might need to shift or change, be refined, be nuanced, et cetera. As an example of this, we actually a couple months ago added a new challenge to expand challenge. Number two, our 30 days of content challenge and we added this in because we realized that our clients when they got to the marketing modules, they started to actually like have a big fear of visibility come up. And so they had all these fears, all this resistance, they had some kind of unhelpful beliefs coming up that actually prevented them a lot of times from them taking what they were learning and bringing it out into the world. And so we recognized, you know, our intention before this was to create the conditions within which our clients can succeed. But having clients move through it, we started to see, oh there’s a pattern here of clients getting kind of stuck with a fear of visibility. We need to now because we have this information hone in how we are creating the conditions within which our clients can succeed by creating something that specifically addresses this problem or this obstacle. So again, get your stuff to 70 to 80% done. But then allow yourself to continue refining as you go because really, that’s the only way to get any of this solid. So how responsible are you for your clients success and how responsible are they for their own success? I don’t really think that we can quantify it or define a specific line, but I do think that we can start with what we have with what we know with where we are and we can continue being curious and continue really asking ourselves this question so that we can continue refining what we are doing the more that we learn. So my invitation to you today is simply to decide what responsibility or responsibilities are you committed to. They might be the same as mine, they might be different to mine. I don’t care all of it’s totally OK because as long as we are thinking about what we taking responsibility for, then we are doing our part in making sure that we are being who we want to be in our businesses. And hopefully also that we are then saying, here’s what I can control. Here’s what I am saying, client, this is your responsibility as well. And of course, if you do want to build a business that you are then really confident in your unique blend of personal responsibility and client responsibility for success, then come work with me inside whatever program is right for you. Because really this topic is one that bleeds into pretty much everything that I do. All right, you’ve got this. Thanks for being here.
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[Podcast Outro]
Thanks for listening to the Sustainable Success podcast. You’re home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I truly believe that these are the conversations we need to be having more of in our online business community. If you know too, would you leave me a review and/or share this episode with the friends?
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