What do you do if clients aren’t utilizing the support available to them?

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]

We want our clients to utilize the inclusions of our offers because we want them to succeed. But what do we do if they don’t use them or they won’t use them? You creating the conditions within which your right fit clients can and do reliably succeed is actually part of what empowers them to maintain responsibility for their own success.

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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]

raise your hand if you have ever felt like you care more about your client’s success than they do. I am raising my hand right now. I don’t know about you now, of course, I need to clarify this by no means, means that I feel this way with every single one of my clients. This has been a very, very small population of clients. Actually, I’m not working with any clients like that at the moment. So I just do need to clarify that especially very early on in my business. And especially back when I was a done for you, service provider, social media manager, brand strategist, I would feel this way often, I would feel like I seemed to care more about my clients success than they did and they weren’t doing what I knew they needed to do or they weren’t doing what I needed them to do in order for them to get the intended results of our work together. The truth to this is even though we feel that way, it is not actually typically anyway, true that you care more than your clients do. And there are often very legitimate reasons why someone is not taking full advantage of the work that you are doing with them. Now, some of those reasons might actually be the things that they hired you for support moving through or facing. We’ll get to that in a little bit when those resistance patterns show up that cause a client to get stuck in kind of the exact same thing that they hired you to support them with. And while we do want our clients to take full responsibility for their success. Part of which means that we don’t want to be chasing them up to do things that they need to do in order to transform how they want to transform. We as the business owner also have a responsibility to create the conditions within which they can and do reliably succeed. And part of that part of that responsibility that we have to create those conditions within which they can and do reliably succeed is to support our clients to actually utilize the support that is available to them. The work that they have hired you to do or to support them in doing one of my clients recently came to me sharing that their one on one clients, people who mind you are very successful, very present, very intelligent, generally, very kind of with it in other areas of their life. These clients weren’t doing the curriculum or the practices that they needed to be doing outside of their one on one sessions. And so the one on one sessions could only take them so far. And even when this business owner, my client would remind their clients of that fact that the other pieces are actually really necessary to create those results that they’re looking for. Their clients would show all the signs of having understood, having comprehended, having even agreed with that. And yet they would still come to the one on one session, not having done what they truly knew they needed to do in between sessions. Or to give you a few personal examples of how this can play out. Often over the years, I’ve worked with one on one clients who didn’t book one on one sessions and then would maybe scramble at the end of our time together to get everything scheduled or who would just forfeit sessions. I’ve worked with one on one clients who I wouldn’t hear from on Boxer for weeks at a time. And so I’d find myself reaching out to them to check in and see what was going on. Sometimes those clients in the meantime, had been doing what they needed to do, but other times they hadn’t. And so we would lose these weeks at a time where they could have been making progress. And then our program expand, which used to be a very traditional group coaching program with several coaching sessions per week. In addition to the curriculum, we would have clients attend the sessions, but they wouldn’t actually move through any of the trainings. Even when I would specifically point out trainings that would be relevant for them, which often meant that I was ending up answering questions in these group coaching sessions that I knew would have already been answered if they would have gone to the training library as they were invited to. And as I reminded them, hey, this is going to be helpful for you or when we first introduced boxer office hours to expand, which is something that we still do to this day, people weren’t using them, which seemed so weird to me because I was like, this is a full day opportunity to talk to me to receive one on one support and you’re not taking us up on this. We want our clients to utilize the inclusions of our offers because we want them to succeed. But what do we do if they don’t use them or they won’t use them? It’s really easy sometimes to kind of write off this client behavior as, oh, they’re just not doing their part or sometimes even to think. Oh, lucky me. You know, I don’t have to deliver on this thing. And a lot of business owners who experience this have a tendency to think either. Well, maybe I just shouldn’t include this piece, which is actually what we did for a time with the boxer office hours before we brought them back last year or to start thinking. Well, maybe I just need to add more accountability around this. But the truth is you’ve probably included the things that you have in your offers for a reason and in terms of accountability, there’s certainly a way to help provide accountability. We’re going to talk about those in ways that are not you chasing your clients up all the time to continually ensure that they are doing their part. My intention for today’s episode is to explore that liminal space that exists between you taking full responsibility for your clients success and in many ways, having to carry them across the finish line, something that we do not want and you sitting back and kind of washing your hands of their lack of participation in the process, which is also something that for the most part we do not want. Because when you do any type of work with other humans, both parties need to be committed to and involved in the process. And because you as the business owner are in a natural position of power in this dynamic with your clients or your students, you have an extra responsibility to create the conditions within which the humans that you work with. Specifically the right fit humans that you work with can and do reliably 16. And again, part of that is supporting them to actually utilize the support that is available to them. So let’s look at how you can create those conditions within which your clients are actually using the resources and the support available to them while they are simultaneously taking full responsibility for their own success. And a little bit of spoiler alert here you creating the conditions within which they can and do reliably succeed is actually part of what empowers them to maintain responsibility for their own success. I say that again because this is really important. You creating the conditions within which your right fit clients can and do reliably succeed is actually part of what empowers them to maintain responsibility for their own success. Whenever I face this issue of clients not utilizing the support that’s available to them, or maybe one of my clients comes to me experiencing this with their own clients. The first question we always need to ask is is this example, is this person that’s not utilizing the thing or maybe several persons who are not utilizing this inclusion? Is this person a right fit client. Now, there are four components of a right fit client. We’re looking for someone who is an ideal client that is also best positioned to succeed, that is also purchase ready and that is also physiologically ready to transform. I’m not going to go super in depth on what each of those components of a right fit client mean or look like or how you find out what those things are. So, of course, that’s a huge part of our process inside of expand. But I will show you some common signs that someone maybe wasn’t a right fit for the work from the get go early on in my journey as a business coach, I had this belief that people who worked with me didn’t want any of that inner work or the mindset work or the somatic work that I now bring into our work after doing some training on that and that they really were only hiring me for the more outer business strategy focused work. And when I look at some of the clients that I had in those early days, that was indeed true. We can argue over whether that’s a chicken or egg scenario with me, definitely leaning toward that it was actually me the chicken who was responsible for attracting those clients in, who didn’t want to do that work. But the example that I specifically want to share of a client who isn’t a right fit for the work is someone who has to be convinced that a core part of your process is necessary to the work, right? Have you ever worked with someone who just wanted to skip to the end or who didn’t think that oh, this one part was actually necessary and you had to educate them or even convince them to trust you. Yes, this part is actually necessary. We do need to do this might even feel like you’re like fighting like like no, we actually have to do this. I, you know, you’re like standing up strong. Like no, I I promise you, we mean to do this. Someone who needs to be convinced that your process is worthwhile to follow probably is not a right foot client for your work. In my case, somebody who does not believe that we have to do any inner work alongside the external and business building work. That person is not going to be a right fit for my work because I might even say that I know that we need to have both pieces and I bring both pieces in to all of the work that I do with our clients. There are often if you look closely signs from the beginning that this person is not a right fit for the work. And we’re really looking here specifically again at this person who needs to be convinced that your process is worthwhile to follow. The biggest sign is, do you feel in your own body that you cannot bring something up? Or do you feel hesitant to talk about a certain thing that you know, you need to do? But you kind of just get the sense they’re not going to be open to it if still, I mean, we can talk about the somatic piece there in another moment. But very often that is that first clear sign, I and myself feel like I have to skip over something or rush through something or avoid something because I don’t think that this person wants to do that thing and we don’t always want to take that sign at face value because there could definitely be some projection happening here or maybe you are projecting your own fears or concerns onto this client like, oh, they’re not going to want to do this because you know yada, yada yada, whatever belief you have about that. But another big sign then that you’ll want to look out for and to see if this person is maybe not a right fit client for the work is did this person try to tell you exactly what they needed to do in order to transform? Of course, there’s a spectrum here. For example, I don’t want to work with people who have no idea of what they might even in any way need to do in order to grow their business, right? Someone who just has no clue and it’s just coming to me and saying, I want to start a business. OK? Tell me everything. I have no clue. Like that person is not a right fit client for me because they’re typically, again, I say this with nuance, typically coming to me looking for me to save them. But there’s a difference between someone who has ideas and has maybe even done some of their own research. And you know, is still though hiring you for your experience, understanding that you have a level of expertise that they will not be able to get on their own anytime soon. And between someone who thinks that they have it all figured out and is really just kind of hiring you as some sort of implementer or even as someone to just validate what they quote unquote know to be true when a prospective client needs to be convinced that part or all of your approach is valid and worth a while, they’re going to very likely continue to need to be convinced throughout the rest of your time together, the rest of your time working with you, they’re going to have to need you consistently to stand up for and fight for the fact that your approach is valid and worthwhile. And so either you’ll end up kind of again that fighting that advocating for your approach all the time, or you might end up sort of dumbing down your approach or oversimplifying it in an effort to appease the client, which if we take a step back and really let here, we know that you doing so will very likely end up making them less successful, which really means here, it’s a little bit of a lose, lose both ways. Another common sign and there are many, we couldn’t possibly cover all of them. But another common sign that someone might be a wrong fit client from the beginning of your work together, like even in the discovery call is someone who is resistant to the offers that you have available to them and or to the offer that you are specifically recommending to them. A really common example here. And again, I see it’s with the new one, a really common example here could be someone who is coming to you, maybe saying, oh, I want this one on one work, but then based on conversation that you have with them, maybe you recommend a group program or a course or even a different form of one on one work because you’re like, hey, you know, based on this conversation, actually, this is going to be a better fit for you. But they’re like, no, I want to do this one thing like they’re resistant to you and to your expertise, your recommendation from the beginning. Now, this could be a little bit again of a controversial example. And there are certainly scenarios where this person could somehow still be a little bit of a right fit client. You have to really understand what other signs and symptoms to look out for in their physiology, what language they’re using, et cetera to be able to ascertain the difference. But well, often happen in a scenario like this where you’re confident that an offer will support them, but they are resistant to that and they maybe only want to work with you or they only want to work in this one specific package. Typically, it’s in a higher paying package, a higher touch, more one on one package. Typically, what’s happening in this scenario is that they are unconsciously throwing money at a problem hoping that money fixes the problem or for them, it might not even be about the money, but maybe it’s more about a belief that you, the business owner have these kind of magical powers. Of course, they probably wouldn’t see it that way. But you have these sort of magical powers or if they work with you, they have this closer relationship with you. They have this kind of, you know, deeper access point to you that somehow you are going to be able to like fix them or fix their business or fix whatever it is. They’re kind of looking at you to save them when we discuss right, fit clients and expand in other courses. We call this kind of archetype or this persona of a prospective client, someone who is looking for a savior. And this persona is typically very ready to spend money and good money at that. But typically, they are not physiologically ready to transform and or ready to do the work that is required of them in order to transform. And this is not a judgment on them. We all go through this phase of looking for a savior many times throughout our lives and as we transform in different ways, but it is often a sign that this person is not a right fit client, at least not right now. And by the way, if you’re listening to this conversation on Right fit clients, wrong fit clients or not yet, right? Fit clients. And you’re thinking like shit, I’ve totally brought clients in like this or I’ve even working with clients like this right now. We will talk about at the end, what you can do with these clients who typically aren’t utilizing the support that’s available to them and or are actually wrong fit clients. There’s also though I need to be really clear on this. There’s also different versions of a right fit client and someone could be for example, a right fit for our course, the aligned niche but not for expand or someone could be a right fit for expand, but not for a one on one VIP package or for ecosystem. And then even within that someone could be more of a right fit or less of a right fit for expand, but both would still be right fits as I remind our clients all the time, right? Fit clients exist on a spectrum and Perfect fit clients do not exist. This is so important, please like if I I’m gonna like tattoo that on my forehead, right? Fit clients exist on a spectrum. Perfect Fit clients do not exist. And so if you’re thinking I needed to find these Perfect fit clients, you’re not going to find them, you will find people who are right fits. Some will be more of a right fit than others, but all still are generally right fits how to determine if they are a right fit and not yet right fit or definitely a wrong fit. That’s a different conversation. We go in depth on that inside of expand once we understand though, ok, you know, we have people in this offer who are not using this inclusion, but they are right fits like they are a right fit client, then we want to look at is the particular inclusion in question, the one that they are not using, the thing that they’re not doing. Maybe they’re not using boxer office hours, they’re not booking one on one sessions in, they’re not sending you deliverables like they’re not filling their onboarding form, whatever it is. That particular inclusion that they’re not using, is it necessary to reliably facilitate results? So we know, OK, this person is a right fit client. If they’re not, we’ll talk about what to do with that in a little bit here at the end. But we know this person is a right fit client. They’re not using this inclusion. We want to now ask, is this particular inclusion actually necessary to reliably facilitate results or is it actually a distraction from what they need to be doing? I’ll go more into detail in this in a moment. But the simplest kind of litmus test here to understand is this inclusion in this offer. One that actually needs to be here is could they get the intended result of this package or of this offer without doing this thing? Could they get the intended result of this offer without utilizing this inclusion or completing or doing this thing? If so if they could get the result without doing the thing you might want to start thinking about? Well, do I even mean that thing then you would look at is this actually a distraction? And of course, there are layers to this. They’re going to have inclusions that are more relevant, more necessary than other things, but that you still want to include those things that are be less necessary but still necessary. In some way, the client that I shared about at the beginning of this episode, who was having this issue with some of her, one on one clients not doing the practices, not doing the curriculum outside of the one on one sessions, those practices that curriculum was without a doubt necessary to achieve the transformation in her case. And really, I would say in the case of any one on one work, clients cannot achieve a transformation simply by attending one on one sessions. And if it feels like they are and the one on one sessions are what you both attribute their success to then. And I say this gently, you might be creating a codependent relationship. Oh I’m going to leave you hanging on that one for a moment because I’m going to come back to that. But first, I want to say, let me just clarify this one on one sessions are not the thing that creates results or at least they’re not the thing that can, you know, like the main thing that creates results that creates a transformation when I’m on sessions can create breakthroughs. But our clients need to be at least engaging with the work somehow in their own brain and being and day to day life in between sessions as well. So it doesn’t always have to be like, oh I give them journal prompts or something like that, that they do in between sessions. Like it doesn’t always have to be something like that, something very tangible that they’re doing. And even that I would ask is that a distraction are those journal prompts? I don’t know why that’s coming. But are those journal prompts actually really necessary to them achieving the transformation? It might not be, but we don’t want clients or even ourselves to start thinking that one on one sessions are the thing that creates the results. They might create breakthroughs. But true transformation has to happen by our clients doing the things in between as well. Because again, if it feels like that one on one session is what you and the client are both attributing that success to or maybe even just one of you is attributing that success to. Then I say this gently, again, you might be creating a little bit of a codependent relationship with your client or clients. I say this because our clients need to be able to create and then sustain a transformation on their own in order to truly transform. And I might even reword that they don’t necessarily need to create it on their own, but they do need to be able to sustain it on their own. Now, of course, again, you’re an expert at the work that you do. So you are a catalyst on this journey for them, right? Like bringing this as a personal example here at HCO, all of our clients could build sustainably successful businesses on their own. Yes, it would probably take months or years longer than when they work with us. And some of them might decide through that much lengthier journey that they don’t want to keep going, but they could still do it. Not a single one of our clients here at HCO needs me. They do not need and I mean, need in a very specific way, the sense of a true need, they do not need me nor do they need the work that we do. They could do this on their own, but they invest in the work that we do here at Hulu, that I do that my team does because our clients know that we are catalyzing their journey. We’re effectively speeding it up by showing them the things that they need to learn and embody and implement without them having to go and figure out what they need to learn and embody and implement all of the study and experimentation and experiences that I have amassed and made cohesive and clear over the years, both before doing my work as a business coach and also doing this work with over 100 individual business owners and thousands of course participants, our clients do not need us. We are catalysts and that’s great and bringing this back to what I was saying with the one on ones. If you’re working one on one, I know this is such a specific example. But if you are working one on one with clients, your one on one sessions are not the thing that creates the full transformation. They contribute to it. They might even be the most important part of the journey. But they are not the thing your clients need to be doing work in between sessions. And again, that can even just be like internal work that can be sitting with something that can be, you know, like applying things in different ways. It doesn’t have to be some tangible assignment, but they mean to be doing something other than just showing up to sessions in order naturally transform. I remember early on in our maybe like second or so iteration of expand, we brought a copy coach in to do monthly copy reviews with our clients. And in that moment when we did that, I would have told you that I was doing this because part of building sustainably successful businesses is having copy website, copy sales page, copy all the things, right? But looking back from the vantage point I have today, I can see that actually, I included a copy coach in that iteration of expand because I felt like I needed to add a bunch of value and be this sort of one stop shop for our clients, right? Running the inclusion of this copy coach through the litmus test. Could they get the intended result of this offer without doing this thing? The answer is very clear that our clients didn’t actually need me to include a copy coach. They couldn’t get the intended result of expand without the copy coach. And in fact, with the clients that I work with a copy coach, can often become a little bit of a distraction from what they truly need to do because our clients can sometimes get a little bit stuck in the, I need to get my copy just right. And truthfully though spending a little bit of time reworking, copy is something that is probably suited either to really the end of the journey of expand or even after the journey and expand. And not to mention, I don’t need to include a copy coach and expand because I don’t have to be nor really do I want to be. Nor really could I ever be the only thing our clients will ever need to succeed. Expand does not need to be a one stop shop. Expand does not need to be the last investment she’ll ever make. Nor could it be. I actually don’t believe that a single investment could be the last one you ever need to make. If you’re curious about that, you can go listen to our episode on. I think it’s the, the things I’ll no longer say in my marketing or something like that. I’ll have to find the number of that I would rather though have our clients if they’re like, oh, I want to work on copy, go to one of the copywriters that I really trust whose work that I love. Many of whom I’m now an affiliate for and use their templates or even hire that person if that is what our client feels like they need to do for a copy audit for whatever it is and is there, you know, maybe someplace in the future where we bring a copy coach in where I rethink this, I don’t know there could be, but again, we always want to run all of our inclusions through the litmus test of. Could our clients our right foot clients get the intended result of this offer without this thing or without doing this thing? If our clients are using an aspect of our program or our package or our offer, and we’re content that the vast majority of the people who are using that inclusion are indeed right fit clients. We need to explore whether this inclusion actually needs to be part of the offer that copy coach didn’t need to be part of the offer. Still doesn’t need to be part of expand to bring back though our boxer office hours example, an inclusion of expand as it sits today. When we introduced boxer office hours. A few years ago, people weren’t using it. I would literally have a whole day set aside dedicated to boxer office hours and I would receive zero messages back then. I took that response from our clients or lack of response from our clients to mean, well, maybe they just don’t want it. And so we stopped offering Boxer office hours for a while. However, when we restructured expand, which you can listen to season six episode one where we shared the behind the scenes of Hulk’s Messy Middle. If you want insight into how we’ve restructured it or you know what it used to look like or whatever, what that process was in that restructure of expand, we realized that while our clients were getting a ton of value from trainings and workbooks from our monthly Q and A on Zoom from their bonus one on one session, feedback on their messaging their marketing content from their module, check in feedback videos that I provide and all the other things and expand. We saw that having another touch point with me each month was gonna be really helpful and doing that touch point in the form of a Boxer office hour would open up space for more of like a conversational and organic avenue for asking for support, which sometimes is just not fully available when you’re in A Q and A on Zoom, for example, or you’re asking for support in the community Facebook, it’s just not always possible to get that more conversational support in those containers. And so we recognized having that conversational support is going to be something that would be really supportive for our clients. We brought Vox your office hours back to expand because they passed the litmus test. Could our clients get the intended result of this offer without doing this thing? Sure they could. And our clients utilizing Boxer office hours would make it even more reliable that they get that intended result. But then our next question was how do we actually get people to use boxer office hours? We knew that our clients, even clients who were true right foot clients in the past hadn’t used the boxer office hours before when they were available the first time, a couple of years ago that we included them and expand, which is why we as business owners get to really look at how do I as the business owner here fulfill my obligation of creating the conditions within which my clients reliably see the intended result of this offer. And part of that is, as I said at the beginning, how do I actually support my clients to utilize the inclusions of the offer as they were intended to be utilized before we get there? I’m not going to go super deep on this. But there is a really clear process for figuring out what needs to be included in an offer and what doesn’t and would rather be a distraction. And I share an insight into that process inside of our free guide, powerful offers that transform. So go check that out if you want a little bit of a deeper look at this. If our job as the business owner is to create the conditions within which our right fit clients can and do reliably succeed, then part of our job is creating the conditions within which they actually utilize the resources and the inclusions available to them. And of course, based on what we just talked about specifically, we want them to utilize inclusions that actually need to be part of the offer. We do not want them to utilize inclusions that are essentially distractions from them, doing what they need to do to achieve their intended result or transformation, which is why we just don’t want to even include those things from the first place to continue this example of the Boxer office hours and expand when we first reintroduced them to expand, only a very small minority of our clients actually used them. And we even had one or two times where no one showed up behind the scenes. Like me and my team again are like, what the heck is happening? Like why is no one taking us up on this? It’s such a great opportunity. And again, it had passed that litmus test. We saw our clients are going to be able to even more reliably get results if they do utilize Boxer office hours, not necessarily every month, but at least a couple of times throughout the program. When it feels like it’s going to be supportive for them, it could also be every month. So, you know, there’s that too. So at that point though, where we’re kind of behind the scenes like why is no one doing this? We actually had an expander, a business owner reach out to us and she shared, you know, I don’t really know what I can ask about or talk about box office hours. And for us here at HCO, that was a little bit of a duh moment. Like, oh, we haven’t made that clear. We just made a little bit of an assumption here. We had a little bit of a blind spot here. We assumed. Oh, people know what they want and need support on. So they’ll show up for Boxer office hours if they want or need support. But knowing what you need support on and knowing whether box or office hours are the right avenue to request and receive that support are two different things. Us taking the responsibility that we have as the business owner here to create the conditions within which our clients utilize the resources available to them looked like in this situation. Adding very clear examples of what you could ask or talk about at Boxer office hours. So every time that we email about boxer office hours, we include examples of what you could ask what you could talk about. What that actually very practically looks like. It seems so simple, right? We just added some examples like literally maybe three sentences. And yet what do you know since we’ve done that? We have consistently nil had a good amount of our expanders participating in Boxer office hours every single month, one teeny tiny shift. And there you go. Clients are now utilizing this inclusion that we knew would really support our clients to even more reliably create the intended result of the program. One of my mentors, Joanna Lindenbaum of the Applied Depth Institute, which is where I completed my coaching training. She often talks about the idea of creating a tight container with our clients. And I know that some people have like really intense feelings around the word container. But I personally love thinking about our offers in terms of containers because it really communicates to me in a very visual way. This idea of boundaries, this idea of expectations and really this idea of clarity. And I’m always reminded, like creativity loves boundaries and having that container. As again, it feels good for me to say it might not feel great for you. You can use a different word here. But having that container actually allows space for greater creativity. And really, I would say space for even more effective support of our clients so much of creating a tight container though really is about clearly communicating boundaries and expectations. And then of course, also actually maintaining and following through on those boundaries and expectations. But here’s the deal and something that we almost need to assume as business owners so that we can actually create that quote unquote tight container. Most humans in general, especially I would say in the Western world, which prioritizes individualization. Most humans are not so great at asking for or admitting that they need support. I’m gonna even just nuance that even more most humans that I know are not so great at asking for or admitting they need support. And even when they recognize that something is challenging or difficult, we are actively trained by so many aspects of a westernized society to handle that thing ourselves. To the point where it’s often not even a thought like, oh, I’ll go ask so and so to see if they can support me, like, even if they’re literally paying for that support, we often struggle to actually ask for and then receive that support. And sometimes we don’t even struggle with it because it’s just not even a thought, not to mention, even when we do recognize that we would like support on something we often are afraid of asking for or needing quote unquote too much support, right? It’s like we have this feeling of, oh, I can only get a little bit, you know, I have to be careful or I don’t want to take up too much oxygen or I don’t want to take up too much space or, you know, I know they’re busy, they have their own things going on. Like if it’s not a problem, I’m so sorry that I have to be a human who needs support. I’m dramatizing this. I’ve been there a million times myself. So I’m not saying any of this with judgment at all. Baloney, recognize as business owners, particularly business owners who work with other humans, which are, for the most part, I think everyone here listening because I really work with the service providers, with the coaches, with the consultants, the strategists, the, you know, practitioners and guides. Like I tend to work primarily and really, actually I would say exclusively with people who are working with other humans through their work in their online business. And so we recognize though that these barriers are somewhat reliably present in our clients again, especially if they grew up in or live today as adults in a more westernized culture. We as the business owner, the one who is implicitly in the position of power in a dynamic, have a responsibility to pre empt this, to pre empt our clients not asking for support or feeling bad about asking for support. And we can do this really through communication but also in some very practical aspects of creating the container for our offer. A really specific example here like this is so specific, but some people who are coaches, for example, but also done for your service providers. I’ll give an example of both a lot of times with coaches. They’ll say, oh, you know, my one on one clients, you have 12 sessions, you know, in these six months. So book them in whenever you want to or if you are ad free service provider, it might be, oh, we have, you know XYZ sessions and those sessions are, we have like a strategy session, we have, you know, reviewing the deliverable session, we have those things and we’ll like schedule them as we go instead of prescheduled them from the beginning. What often is happening when we do one of those examples there where we’re kind of not pre scheduling sessions, but rather saying here are the sessions we have like, you know, we’ll get to them when we get to them or, you know, in the coaches scenario, book them in when you want them. What we’re especially doing, especially in that coaching scenario is putting the onus on the client to schedule them and making them have to ask, do I want support this week? Do I have something that I need to talk about? Whereas if we prescheduled those sessions, you know, with my one a month clients, it’s like we have, we meet the 1st and 3rd week of the month and it’s always at the same time on the same day when we’re pre scheduling those sessions. What we’re actually doing is instead of it being, oh, do I need a session? It’s, oh, I have this session. How do I want to use this session? This is what I was saying before by us creating the conditions within which our clients can and do reliably succeed. Part of which is creating the conditions within which they actually utilize the support that’s available to them. What we’re actually doing is also empowering them to take full responsibility for their success. My one on one clients have sessions prescheduled. They know when they are, where they are, what time they’re at all of those things, they’re on a consistent schedule. And so instead of my clients having to not only grapple with the work that we’re doing, but also grapple with. Do I want support? Do I have something specific to talk about? Do I, you know yada, yada, yada, do I need a session? Do I want a session now? It’s how do I want to use this session? They are taking more responsibility for their success by now having to come into the session prepared and I validate them coming prepared as well because in a one on one coaching container, I start the session by asking what is your intention for our session today or what would you like to receive today? So they know that they are responsible for determining what we are working on. They know that they are responsible for coming to the session prepared and part of what helps them come to sessions prepared is that they have that tight container. They have those sessions prescheduled and we’ve essentially taken away one decision so that they can make an even more important decision we’ve taken away the decision of. Do I need a session and now they can make an even more important decision. What do I want to focus on? What do I need support on? Where would I like to go in this session, we do this also through communication, right? Like that was a really practical example here of how we actually, you know, support our clients to utilize the support and to pre empt this reality that so many of us live in where we’re uncomfortable asking for support or we don’t even think to ask for support. But we also help our clients do this and help our clients actually utilize that support and utilize it to its fullest extent through our communication. I’m going to just keep using the one on one client example here because it’s the one that’s coming to you. But would I bring a new one on one client into my work? We spend our first session like 55 minutes talking about how they can make the most of the container. Part of that is us kind of vision casting like what is it you’re wanting to achieve, you know, looking at that kind of mapping out a very loose plan for what that might look like. But for the most part, that session is me sort of talking at them and being like here are the things that are going to help you really succeed in this container. And part of that, I’m just going to literally like, you know, give you some very tangible examples here. Part of that is, let’s say on Vox or for example, I communicate, you know, you have access to me on Boxer, you’re welcome to send me text messages or voice messages. When you send me voice messages, please keep them under that like five minute mark, which that boundary is different for one on one clients than it is for say, our expanders on boxer office hours. But you know, keep your messages under this time. You’re welcome to send messages any day of the week at any time of the day. I reply Monday through Thursday my time with 48 hour response time. So if you send me a message on Monday, then I will get to you by at that day, Wednesday, right? Or if you send me a message on Friday, then I could get to you by end of day, Tuesday, 48 hour business response time. I also give our clients. Here are some examples of what you might choose to talk about on boxer. Here’s how to differentiate whether something is better for a one on one session or if it’s something we can talk about on boxer. Here’s what we’re going to do if you come to me with something on Boxer, but I think it’s better for a one on one. I’ll tell you, hey, actually, let’s talk about this on the one on one because this is going to be a more in depth conversation. Like I literally lay all of this out for our client, for my one on one clients in that first session. I also will tell them you know, even if you don’t specifically feel like you need support on something, still update me on what’s happening in your business. Because when you just update me on things that are happening in your business, now, I’ve been kind of along the journey with you. And so the next time you do need support on something, I’m gonna have all of that as context and therefore I’ll be able to support you even more effectively. But then here’s the next part that I bring in to every single one of the sessions are these conversations with one on one clients where I’m talking about, here’s how you actually really succeed. And again, all I’ve really talked about here is just one on one boxer support. So you see why we need a whole session to talk through, like here’s how you succeed and here’s how you get the most in this program because I go so deeply into detail. But one thing that I also share here, especially when I’m talking about boxer support for my one on one clients. I say this to my clients. You can trust me to maintain my own boundaries. This is me really speaking to that part of so many of the people that I work with who are afraid of asking for too much support or what if I need too much help or I don’t wanna like, you know, I don’t wanna annoy you or I don’t wanna, you know, prevent you from doing other things or helping other people. Like I reiterate to our one on one clients over and over. You can trust me to maintain my own boundaries. If you wanna send me a message on a Saturday, even though I will likely not reply until Monday at the earliest. Send me the message on Saturday if you’re in a different country in a different time zone and you’re going to send a message when it’s 2 a.m. my time. And you’re like, oh, you know, I don’t want to wake her up, guess what? It’s my responsibility to maintain that boundary. So it’s my responsibility to make sure that I don’t get woken up by your message at 2 a.m. You get to trust that I will maintain my own boundaries. It is my responsibility to maintain my own boundaries, not yours. And with that said, if I do choose to flex on one of my boundaries, let’s say you send me a message at, you know, 9 a.m. on a Saturday when I normally am not on boxer, but I choose to respond on Saturday. That is not because I am, you know, trying to appease you or because I feel like I have to, I am flexing on my boundary because I have chosen to flex on my boundary. It is my responsibility to maintain my own boundaries. We have these lengthy conversations at the beginning of my time working with one on one clients but also it’s something that we do in every container, like everywhere that we are working with people, we have these kinds of conversations maybe in different ways, of course, but we do this and we try to do it so thoroughly because communication around expectations and boundaries is one of the most important things that we as business owners can do to support our clients and actually utilizing the support that is available to them. Like I said, like we almost want to communicate to the point where it feels overdone. We want to communicate so clearly about how they can make the most of it about what our boundaries are about, you know, what expectations are that we can have of each other, we want to over communicate them because if our client is not clear about what’s allowed, what’s available to them, how to actually use what’s available to them, or they’re worried about being too much or needing too much or taking up too much space or whatever that is for them, if that’s where they are and we have not fully clearly communicated. No, here’s like the boundaries here, here’s the expectations, then they’re going to be less likely to actually utilize the resources and inclusions available to them. Now, when we’re thinking about creating the conditions within which our clients actually do utilize what is available to them doing. So creating those conditions is not just about communication, although as you can see, like that is wildly important. It is also about setting the actual offer up to make, taking the steps that the client needs to take. Super obvious, super clear, super simple, super straightforward, for example, just one tiny example here and expand our clients get a bonus one on one coaching session. However, that session is not a just like, oh you’ve joined the program schedule this whenever you want or need to, we haven’t actually ever done it that way. But I would assume based on other data points that we have that if we did it that way, most people wouldn’t book that session. Even though again, that might not be the thing that I’m like, that’s the most important thing. But I know that it’s important and I know that it is going to support our clients. It has passed that litmus test and is actually an inclusion that is going to support them to even more reliably create results. Right? But if it was just schedule, whenever you want to think our clients probably wouldn’t book it in or a good amount of them wouldn’t book it in, they might forget. They might kind of be like, oh, I don’t wanna bug Carly. I know she’s busy. She has a lunch going on or whatever it is, some of them would book it, but not all of them would. However, how we have it and expand is complete up to this point in the training library at which point we send you an invitation to book that one on 1 100% of our clients have used that one on one so far since we instituted it about a year ago, 100% of our clients in expand since we instituted this have booked that one on one. Why? Because we’ve removed an element of decision from it, like, oh, when do I want to use this? Do I actually need it? We’ve removed that decision and made it. So it’s like, oh, well, here is the logical next step, you complete it up to this point in the training library. Now here is a one on one session for you. And it’s not just like, oh surprise you get a one on one. It’s we find that clients at this step are what like really do benefit from having some individualized attention and support, which is why we invite you to book your one on one session here. So that way you can get that support by creating this this sort of milestone in their journey through expand that they have to reach in order to access the one on one. Not only is it making so that it’s way easier and obvious for them to know? OK. Yep, that’s my next step. Book this call, book this coaching call. But we’re also communicating by making this bonus one on one dependent on reaching this milestone. We are communicating with the real value of expand is in completing the trainings and our clients in expand will almost certainly confirm that’s true. Like the real value of expand is in completing the trainings. Like actually going through each of the modules and building each of the elements of your sustainable success system. This one on one is an addition, a one on one coaching session is not the thing that is going to directly contribute to results that can be found in the training library. It is bonus, it is a bonus support by creating this milestone. We are setting our clients up to understand we’re communicating in a very, you know, without words away, almost that the real value of the program is not the one on one. It’s the trainings. And again, there’s a really clear process here for figuring out how to build your offers in a way that actually prioritizes the important inclusions and makes them obvious and makes it really simple for your clients to keep taking steps forward through the program through the course, through the done for your offer, through whatever the offer is, we’re not going to really go there. That is something that we go very deep into inside of expand though. So you’re welcome to head over there, join us and expand. If you want to build and talk about how do we actually build these offers so that clients are consistently taking each of the steps. So so far we’ve talked about, OK, you have an inclusion that is not being used. We’re looking at is the person or the people who are not using it? Are they right fit clients? If they are, then we’re looking at. OK. Is this inclusion actually necessary? I gave you a litmus test for that. Then we’re looking at how do we actually create the conditions within which our clients use this necessary inclusion? But now what do you do if you have clients right now in offers who are not using the inclusions that are available to them or some of the inclusions or even just one of the inclusions that’s available to them? But also what do you do if you realized that you have clients in an offer right now, who are actually not a right fit client and they’re not utilizing what’s available to them. First and foremost, we have to explore what we can or need to do to the actual architecture of the offer to make it easy and obvious to utilize the inclusion. We just talked about this a little bit but really here it is about OK. Are there shifts that we can implement that are not actually going to really mess up our current clients experience? First, we actually have to explore what you can and I might even say need to do to the actual architecture of the offer to make it even easier and super obvious for your clients to utilize the inclusion. Now implementing these shifts may or may not end up being something that current clients experience or benefit from depending on what they are and how you go about making those shifts. But you want to at least think about what shifts do I need to make. And if they don’t benefit current clients, we’ll talk about that in a second, but at least they’ll benefit future clients. Like I’m learning through the delivery how I can actually make this even better for future clients and make it so that future clients are even more likely to use these inclusions as just some like very practical examples here. If people aren’t using boxer office hours or even like just a boxer support or whatever, you know, equivalent in between session or throughout the process support that they have available to them. If people aren’t using that, can you more clearly communicate here is how you use this. Here are the situations where it would make sense to use this thing or let’s say people aren’t going through the curriculum? Can you add some sort of milestone requirement that they have to meet within the curriculum in order to access some other element or some other inclusion in the offer? Or could you even add some form of externalized accountability to support them to move through the curriculum? This also is where people get really into Gamification of courses. I think Gamification of courses is amazing and I actually don’t think it’s necessary. I think there are other ways to support people, to support our students in the specific example of courses to actually continue moving through and make the progress in the program. Or let’s say, you know, another example here, you’re a done for you, service provider and your clients are frequently delayed in getting you the important assets or the resources that you need to do your job. Could you set a very clear expectation in your contract and also in an onboarding conversation for what happens if you do not receive what you need on the specified timeline? You know, maybe you’ll choose to pause the project, maybe you’ll choose to even cancel the project depending on what is right for you. And of course, how egregious their delay is and how much it impacts your business and your work if you’re dealing with a current client though, that’s kind of like thinking big picture. How do we, you know, make shifts to the offer so that future clients will benefit from this actual inclusion that I know that they need to do if you’re dealing though with a current client who’s not utilizing inclusions, and you can’t really make a shift to the architecture of the offer without somehow throwing off the whole container and dynamic for them. Well, whether or not they’re a right or wrong fit client, you may want to reset the container. Now typically resetting the container looks like having a 1 to 1 face to face, voice to voice conversation. So, you know, typically on Zoom, I find that having the face and having the voice is sometimes really helpful in these kinds of conversations because these conversations are a little bit tense, a little bit, you know, or a little bit like you kind of have to tiptoe into them a little bit to not uh freak the client out and keep them on your side and, you know, help it to be a productive conversation. Keeping them on your side isn’t the right way to say it. It really is like how to make it a productive conversation. You want to kind of enter gently, I believe that what is it? Is it Gottman who calls it like a gentle start up or something like that, although he’s talking about romantic relationships, but it’s kind of the same thing here in client relationships, but you typically want to have a 1 to 1 conversation. Now, I also, they understand that for some people having a more difficult conversation in text rather than like voice to voice, face to face, can feel safer and can also allow us to be more intentional with what we say. So that is absolutely an option as well. And if you’re going to reset the container in that way, though, in a not face to face way, I would still typically recommend that you have the client who you’re going to reset the container with agree to a specific time for the conversation to occur or to at least start. So that way there’s no questions about like, oh, you know, did they read the email or did they, did they see my box or whatever it is? You don’t have any of those questions? You’ve both agreed. We will be here at this time to have this conversation in that resetting the container conversation. You are probably going to want to preface it by emphasizing how important it is to you that your client, that this person gets what they desire to receive from this offer. Like you really want to start there. You want to start by emphasizing how important it is to you that they transform, how they want to, that they get the results or transformation, they desire to et cetera. Then from that place, you want to take responsibility for where you may not have been as effective as you desired to be at creating a strong container. You know, maybe you share that you’ve realized that having them book their one on one sessions in whenever they desire to is not actually helping them and having that stability and that consistency that are really crucial ingredients to creating a transformation. Or maybe you share that you only communicated due dates and timelines once or maybe even not at all. But maybe when you did, like you even did so verbally instead of in a written way. And so you recognize that your very minimal or non existent communication around timelines could actually be causing some challenges for them and sticking with that timeline because you’re asking them to remember something that really is just like one more detail for them to remember in their overall life. And people are busy. People have things going on outside of just the work together, right? We start by emphasizing why we’re here, what our intention is that we really care about them. And then we start by taking responsibility with where we have gone wrong or could have done something better because that helps the other person to feel safer in this conversation and more receptive to what we have to say from there. This is now where we want to gently and gentle is the key word here. Invite them to take responsibility for their part as well and you can do this by gently calling out what you are seeing or not saying, you know, like I have reached out to you and shared that I need you to complete that on boarding form and you haven’t done it yet, you know, did you complete that or am I saying it correctly that that hasn’t been done yet or, you know, I communicated that I would need these assets from you so that I could start my work and I haven’t received them yet. Am I saying that correctly? You know, did you send them to me? Did they maybe get lost? Like pointing out what you’re seeing. And I really love that kind of qualifier here of. Am I seeing that correctly? Does that feel true to you? Like opening it up that way? Because it very well could be like, oh, someone sent it to you, but they actually had a typo in your email, like it could be something like that. So we want to open it up gently, then you’ll probably like after kind of opening that up, getting their clarity from them on what they’re seeing. If you guys agree on what you’re seeing, then you’ll probably want to point their attention back to why they have hired you and what their desire, their intention was in making that decision. You know, for example, you could say, I know when we first started working together, you were really looking forward to being confident in your marketing and your lead generation and your sales is that still a priority for you? It might seem obvious. Well, duh, they hired me because they want to do XYZ. Like of course, it’s a priority but it might not actually be, but truthfully, it might be a by you actually asking the question. Is that still a priority for you? It gives them an opportunity to reflect. Yeah, wait, is it a priority for me? Because often, you know, as you know, life gets busy, things happen and sometimes we lose sight of the things that actually are a priority and So being invited to remember. Oh yeah, that is actually a priority for me is such a powerful reminder, such a powerful moment for us to be able to recommit and say yes, that is, that is actually still a priority for me. And if it is indeed still a priority for the client as it more often than not will be from there, you can now explore together what you might be able to do and what they might be able to do to get your work together sort of back on track and to really begin making progress toward their intended outcome of your work together. It’s also important though, in this to recognize this is not something you’re gonna say with your clients, but this is something for you to know. It’s important to recognize that there are consequences to every decision that we make. And it’s likely that if a client persistently has not taken the steps that they need to take or utilized inclusions, again, we’re talking like persistently here is typically when you’re having this resetting the container conversation, this more in depth resetting the container conversation. If they have persistently not taken steps, they need to take or utilize inclusions that were at one point available to them, those inclusions might no longer be available and or you might not actually be able to complete everything that they had originally desired to complete or you know, or to transform in whatever way they had desired to. And of course, again, kind of bringing this back to know the conversation that you’re going to have with them. You probably don’t want to use that word consequences with your client. But you do want to acknowledge that because you are needing to have this conversation because things have persistently not happened, leading up to this. Things are different than when you first started this work together. Of course, if things actually are different, they might not be. But in a lot of cases, they’re going to be which back to what I was sharing before about boundaries, you get to decide what if any boundaries you want to flex on. And if a client, you know, let’s say, hired you to build a website in a week, but they didn’t complete their onboarding form until the first day of that week. Even though you had communicated prior, they need to have it done at least two weeks in advance. So you can begin formulating the mood board, send that to them for approval. Before beginning on the design, you could choose to reschedule that week because they did not complete the thing they needed to complete on the timeline you laid out for them. But you could also choose to say I reserved this week for you. And so we’re actually gonna go ahead with this week. But because of the delay, I’m not going to be able to design all of the pages that we had previously discussed. You could also say, you know, a third option here. There’s so many different things you could do. Again. This really is about what’s right for you. What’s right for the client? What’s right for both of you at the same time. But you could also do something like we could either move forward this week knowing that I’m not gonna have as much time to get the things done that we had originally agreed upon or we could book in a few extra days later in the month to complete those other things at an added cost. Now, of course, this is where contracts are necessary. This is where contracts come in. We want to have specific clauses that relate to these types of things and that clearly spell all of this out. Please see a lawyer or you know, at least a template for that kind of thing. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to give you legal advice there. But the having a contract that protects you for these kinds of scenarios is also going to be something that is just super supportive, super helpful in creating that tight rather than leaky container with your clients. In some situations with clients. You might find that you actually want to or even need to be quite firm or strict on a boundary, maybe because you’ve had like kind of a light version of this resetting the container conversation before and nothing has changed in those cases where a client is, you know, not seeming to like, grasp on to the boundaries or the things that you’re communicating, then you might choose to release them as a client. We’ll talk about what that looks like in a moment. Or you could just choose to be really firm with them. For example, in the situation of my client who came to me, whose one on one clients weren’t doing the curriculum outside of their sessions. If I was the business owner there, I might tell my clients who aren’t doing that. You know, you need to have completed XYZ before our next one on one session. And if you haven’t completed that, then you need to email me 24 hours in advance and we will wait to reschedule your session until you have, we’re going to cancel that session, wait to reschedule it until you have confirmed to me that you have completed XYZ or again, depending on how firm you want to be. You could even say if you haven’t completed XYZ, then you’re going to forfeit that session and you’ll still need to have completed XYZ before our next scheduled session. Of course, we probably also have some boundary here around you have, let’s say six months from the date of sign up to utilize the sessions that are available to you because we don’t want to get stuck in some loop where clients just keep not doing the thing and then, so we keep either like rescheduling sessions or waiting to reschedule sessions. And now it’s been two years and they still have sessions available. Again. This is about contracts and really protecting ourselves in those ways, but also protecting the client in those ways by clearly communicating those things in a way we all have agreed on at the beginning of a container is so important and there might be some situations where they’re actually, you know, this person who’s not utilizing the inclusions is actually a really wrong fit client or just a wrong fit client. They don’t have to be a superlative, right or wrong fit client. And so in that case, you might choose, I don’t actually wanna reset this container. It might actually be time to release them as a client and doing so can be painful, it can be stressful, it can be all the things I’ve done it myself. But there is definitely a point where you just realize this isn’t working and it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. For me, it’s not worth it for them like it’s just not working. And so we need to cut ties here. Releasing the client is actually in the best interest of both of you. And of course, there’s a gradient to this like you don’t have to always just fully cut ties and never talk to them again, you could just move them into a different offer or you might shorten the timeline you’re working together or make the deliverables that you’re going to actually create smaller or something like that. There’s a gradient here. It doesn’t have to be a OK. Bye. Never seeing you again. It could also be that way if that’s what you want and that’s what’s going to be most in service as you can see here, you know, looking through, what do we do a seemingly simple question. What do we do if our clients are not using an inclusion? I am the offer. There are so many layers though to this conversation and really so much of this conversation and and really so many things in business, so much of it comes down to, are you bringing right fit clients into right for them work and have you built offers that reliably facilitate the intended result of the work? There’s a very clear roadmap for doing all of the above and seriously so much more, which is exactly what you will learn and implement inside of expand. As a reminder, expands our comprehensive business training program which equips you to bring in a steady stream of clients and stabilize your cash flow while providing you with the foundations to build a business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue if you’re looking for. And really, you know, listening to this conversation and seeing that you might need to actually get clearer on who your right fit client is, you might need to get even better at figuring out how do I build offers that reliably facilitate results? How do I create the conditions within which my right foot clients reliably succeed? How do I figure out like, you know how to navigate these sometimes murky waters with? What do I do in these situations with clients if you’re ready to have support on that? And you’re seeing that you want to actually be able to create these offers that reliably facilitate results with inclusions that your clients actually use that also really to turn your business into one where you get 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. And I invite you to come join us inside of expand. I know that I shared so much today. Like seriously, I’m looking at the clock, this is a long episode. And so I once again, want to invite you to remind yourself of the hoo motto, look external for ideas and internal for answers. I invite you specifically to take note of what has this conversation sparked for you? What do you specifically want to hold on to or take away or carry forward with you? And then of course, what do you see as your very next step? All right, my friend, I am celebrating you big time and I will talk to you soon.

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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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