Latest / The One Small Change Podcast / Clarity, Confidence, and Consistent Clients for the Last Quarter

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Clarity, Confidence, and Consistent Clients for the Last Quarter · The One Small Change Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to The One Small Change, and as always, I am thrilled
• 0:04
  to embark on this journey of exploration and transformation with you.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years, maybe
• 0:11
  more, closer to 35 years now, of entrepreneurial
• 0:14
  experience, and I have a passion for discovering growth
• 0:18
  through the power of seemingly small change. So I want
• 0:22
  to thank you for joining me, and here's the thing.
• 0:26
  This week and next week, I'm going to be telling you
• 0:30
  some of the things that I learned and some of the things that
• 0:34
  were unexpected that I've discovered. And so what
• 0:38
  I want to talk about this week is what's happened in the
• 0:41
  first 8 months of this year. And I think it's really
• 0:45
  an important thing to do because right now I think we're all in that
• 0:48
  back-to-business energy. I mean, we're finishing out the summertime.
• 0:53
  If we have kids, they're getting ready for school. We're starting to say it's fall.
• 0:57
  You know, it's time to start cranking it up. So the question
• 1:01
  is, with 8 months behind us and 4 months left to go,
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  what am I going to do next? What have I actually learned? And
• 1:09
  what's changed because I learned it? I mean, I heard a quote the other day
• 1:13
  that I just found really funny. It said,
• 1:17
  learning without application is just entertainment. So
• 1:21
  there are a couple of reasons I'm doing this. One is that I have had
• 1:25
  some fantastic guests, but I always have to— I always want to
• 1:28
  showcase them. And there's lots that I want to say and
• 1:32
  don't normally get the time to say it. So I'm going to take 2 episodes
• 1:36
  and do that too, because I think it's a really important thing
• 1:40
  to do right now. I want you to have
• 1:43
  back-to-business, business growth energy, but I don't want you to be
• 1:46
  back-to-busy. So I'm gonna talk about the
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  3 things that I talk about, which is clarity,
• 1:54
  confidence, and consistent clients. And what have I learned in all of these
• 1:58
  things? So, you know, what I learned about
• 2:02
  clarity is that it's something that you don't figure
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  out all at once, you get clearer as you go along, you refine,
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  it's not a matter of adding to it, it's about being more
• 2:13
  in focus. You know, sometimes Clarity
• 2:17
  is recognizing what you subtract and what you
• 2:20
  keep, what deserves focus now. What a lot of people feel
• 2:24
  uncomfortable about is that just because you put
• 2:28
  something to the side doesn't mean you can never do it again. It just
• 2:32
  means that you're not going to put most of your energy on it right now,
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  right? So, if, if a client came and you happen to
• 2:40
  have certain skills and they're not, you know, the
• 2:44
  main part of your business, you would still take them, but you're not
• 2:47
  gonna actively market to that one-off. Okay,
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  that's the difference between clarity and taking the wrong
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  clients. The other thing that I think that's really important is that
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  we have to make sure that we're not, you know, working really hard on the
• 3:01
  wrong problem. And so, you know,
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  one of the things that I've added this year that has added to the clarity
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  is we've been doing surveys before each event,
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  and we've gotten some interesting
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  insights. One is that people say that, you know,
• 3:21
  they're struggling with visibility, but the real issue may not be
• 3:25
  visibility. It may be that they're not being
• 3:28
  recognized, and the reason that they're not being recognized is because of
• 3:32
  their message and that they're not building trust.
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  Visibility is everywhere. You can be everywhere,
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  but it doesn't mean that you're gonna be recognized. And
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  here's the thing, visibility is a magnifier.
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  If you have a clear message, it magnifies that so
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  people know exactly what you stand for. If you have an
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  unclear message, it magnifies
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  confusion. And so that's why sometimes it's better to take things away
• 4:02
  so that you spend more time on the things that are right. and write
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  for your right fit question, your right fit clients.
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  So if 10 times more people saw
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  your message today, would you have 10 times
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  more right clients? Or would you be, or would they be
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  10 times more confused? Right?
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  So, you know, the story that I give all the time is the story
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  about if you had to, you know, every time you put an
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  idea out there, you have to put it out 12 times. So, if you've got
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  5 ideas, you're putting it out there 60 times, right? So, how
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  do I, as a client, how do I pick and choose what you're really
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  trying to say to me, right? So,
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  if you were to do 1 message
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  and put it out 20 times, do you think you would get better
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  results? So, that's something to kind of contemplate
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  about why taking some things away. can actually be better
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  for you. So, clarity evolves. It needs
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  refinement. It doesn't necessarily need more
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  information. The other thing is,
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  too, is confidence. Now, you can be confident,
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  and confidence also is not a static thing.
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  Confidence also grows. And in order to become
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  confident, at some point, you have to be uncomfortable.
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  Right? There is no change without stepping out of your
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  comfort zone. So in order to grow your
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  confidence, you have to act. And so sometimes that's doing
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  something that, that feels uncomfortable, doing
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  something that feels wrong.
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  So, you know, I will tell you one of the things
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  I talked about working on the wrong problem. So one of the things that I
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  see a lot of, myself included, is when we don't get the results that we
• 5:59
  want, We go, I'm going to work on my slide, I'm going to
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  work on my, you know, my presentation, I'm going to work on my this,
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  I'm going to work on my that, right, until I get it right.
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  It doesn't matter if nobody shows up to your event.
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  And I have to say, my coach said this to me, I don't know how
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  many times, until I finally understood it. It's better
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  for me to have people
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  Come, have them do the survey so I get some insights,
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  and then I can be more confident in what I'm presenting.
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  And when I see the reaction to that, when I get
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  validation, then I can become more confident
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  that my message is correct. So you need that
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  discomfort, right? I think the other part of
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  discomfort is it's not necessarily a
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  cowardly thing. You know, like, I'm afraid.
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  It's— I think it's also, I want to do better. I want to do my
• 7:01
  best. I want to do the best for the people that are coming. And so
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  that doesn't mean that confidence is uncertainty.
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  Confidence is trusting yourself enough to decide, to act,
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  to learn, and to adjust, right? I used to say to
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  people, don't put yourself on a pedestal.
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  Don't pretend that you know everything because you're only going to get knocked off.
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  It's much better to be— to say, I don't know everything, but
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  I'm willing to look for the answer if I don't know it. Right?
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  And I think that's somebody you can trust. Somebody who acts like they know
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  everything is somebody that either has
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  a blind spot or really doesn't understand what's going on.
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  One of the things that the survey said which was, I thought, really
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  interesting, was 75% of the
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  people that answered the survey said they wanted something to change in
• 7:55
  the next 90 days. And so that was the other reason I
• 7:59
  decided to do this podcast, because we've got more than 90 days,
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  but by the time you hear this, by the time you decide what you
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  want to change, then you'll have like 90 days before you hit the
• 8:10
  holidays. So The question that I
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  want to ask you about confidence is,
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  where are you waiting to feel confident before you act? And
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  when taking action,
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  you know, how is that going to actually help you build confidence?
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  Because you need action to build confidence, and you need
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  to be willing to say, you know, I need to fall down sometimes.
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  So, my question to you is, what do
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  you— what's holding you back? What's keeping you from getting out
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  there? I mean, I know we don't want to be embarrassed. I know we don't
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  want to look foolish or any of those things. But at the same
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  token, people can relate to you
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  when they realize you're not perfect. I mean, you know, and I say
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  this all the time about weight loss. There's nothing that irritated me more
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  when I was, you know, really, really big
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  than having this skinny person say to me, you can do it, you
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  can do it, just try harder. Well, hey, you know,
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  from a physical perspective, there were things that got in my way. Like, I had
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  a big stomach, you know, I got a big chest, you know,
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  I'm not going to be able to do a crunch as well as you can
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  do a crunch. Because I have physical, physical
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  barriers to overcome, right? So somebody
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  who's not willing to, you know, really see what I'm
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  capable of, or really see what I can do, or know that
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  people have challenges, is not somebody that I can have a lot of
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  confidence and trust in. All right,
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  the other thing we want to talk about is
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  consistent clients. And again, we're
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  talking about
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  what are the consistent results that you want,
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  and do you have a process that's going to make that happen?
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  So, you know, we talked about visibility, and,
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  you know, we've got social media, networking, speaking, referrals,
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  collaboration, podcasts. So it's not for lack of action.
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  or activity that, you
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  know, it's that we're repeating it. But I would
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  rather that you do less
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  but show up regularly. So, I mean, one of the things that I do with
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  my clients all the time is they're like, okay, I'm going to do this 5
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  times a week. And then you only do it 2.
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  All right. So you feel bad because you feel like you haven't
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  met your goal. But not only that, you show up 2 times a
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  week, or maybe you show up the 5 times the first week, but the next
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  week you only show up 2 times. I would rather have you build
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  that repeatable cycle or that
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  repeatable process so that you see what works and
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  what makes sense. When I first started,
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  one of my coaches said to me, You know, you need to get
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  out on social media. And I was like, I'm not doing that.
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  I'm not dancing and I'm not showing you my food.
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  Okay. And they were like, well, what do you like to do? And I said,
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  well, you know, I had the Blog Talk Radio show. And so I like
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  talking and I still like talking, which is why I'm doing
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  this solo episode. And they were like, okay, why
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  don't we start with you doing a video once a week?
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  And it's like, I can do that. And then we found something else
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  that I like to do. And so suddenly, you know, after a period of
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  time, I was doing— I was on social media twice a week.
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  Excuse me. And then I found something else that I like to
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  do. I found a method that for me was repeatable,
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  things that I was willing to talk about. So when I
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  talk, I talk about a couple of things. First of all, I talk about my
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  business and and, you know, my beliefs about
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  my business and things that you have to do to grow your business.
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  I talk about my family. I talk about my dog.
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  I talk about my weight loss journey. And I talk about humor.
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  Humor is really important to me. And sometimes the
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  humor is just humor that comes up within a post. And sometimes I see
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  something that I just think is really funny. So one
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  post that I did that I really liked was about an
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  astrophysicist. And they asked him,
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  um, do you believe that there are
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  other, um, life forces, life
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  forms? And he said, well, you know, we'd have to be really arrogant
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  to think we were the only people in the universe. And so he said, well,
• 13:01
  how do you answer people who say they've been abducted?
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  And he said, I, I always ask them, did you steal anything?
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  Which to me just— it just made me laugh because it
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  seemed— I don't know why, but it just seemed funny to me. He was
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  like, we don't— as far as we know, we have no intergalactic law, so
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  nobody's gonna, you know, or any galactic sheriff, so nobody's coming after
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  you. If somebody abducts you, make sure you grab some piece of
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  technology that'll help us. That to me is
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  hysterical. Now, I don't know if that's your sense of humor or not. No.
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  But I share that every once in a while because it just makes me laugh,
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  and in today's world, I feel like you need to laugh.
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  So, to get consistent clients, they need to be able to find you.
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  If you keep changing what you're doing and you keep changing the
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  message that you have, what's gonna happen is, it's like you have a
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  mobile store, that Monday you're one place and you're selling one
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  thing, and then you move it on Tuesday and sell something else, and you move
• 14:05
  it on Wednesday and you sell something else. And on Thursday when that person
• 14:09
  comes back to where you were on Monday and
• 14:12
  tries to, you know, 'cause they're ready to buy something, you're not there
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  anymore. Or if you are there, you're selling something different,
• 14:20
  right? So you have to be able to be, you know,
• 14:24
  to be found by your clients. And one of the ways to do
• 14:28
  that is to stop reinventing. Stop
• 14:31
  reinventing yourself and the way that you come across and that
• 14:35
  kind of stuff. Be yourself. Focus on the things
• 14:39
  that you do really well, right?
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  Understand your client's journey so that they know you know where
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  it is that you can find them. So I said, you know,
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  we're kind of in a changing kind of environment. You've got traditional
• 14:54
  marketing and you've got all the new stuff that's happening. I mean, you've
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  got social media and then you've got AI and all this other stuff, and it's
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  kind of a dimmer switch. And you have to figure out on that scale
• 15:06
  what your client is willing or
• 15:10
  where they're looking to find the
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  solution that you've got. So if you're advertising
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  in a newspaper and your people are only on social media,
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  you are never going to get anybody, right? At the same
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  token, if you're dealing with people who are only occasionally on
• 15:29
  social media, Or only on LinkedIn and they're not on
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  TikTok and all these other places. Being on TikTok doesn't
• 15:36
  necessarily get you any clients. So you have to figure
• 15:39
  out where that sweet spot is on that
• 15:43
  dimmer switch so they can find you. So
• 15:47
  the first thing I would say to you is, what's already
• 15:51
  working in your business?
• 15:56
  that maybe you need to go back to because,
• 16:00
  you know, you saw something, some shiny object. Go back.
• 16:04
  Here's an exercise which I think you might like.
• 16:08
  If you decide that you're going to declutter and throw stuff away, look at some
• 16:12
  of the things you did when you first started, when you
• 16:16
  didn't know any better, when you were, you know,
• 16:20
  a newbie. I did this a couple months ago, and
• 16:24
  some of the stuff that I put together before I was, you
• 16:28
  know, gone through different courses and stuff
• 16:31
  like that, some of the ideas, the foundational
• 16:35
  ideas were the same. I was saying
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  the same thing then as I'm saying now,
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  but I wasn't emphasizing them. Some of the things that I
• 16:47
  started make
• 16:51
  absolute sense now when I refine
• 16:54
  them and focus them down. They were too general
• 16:58
  necessarily before. So when you
• 17:01
  first started out, what was working in your business that you
• 17:05
  were enthusiastic about? Because that's part of being trusted.
• 17:09
  That's part of what
• 17:12
  clients are attracted to. Are you letting them see the things
• 17:16
  that you're excited and that you are excited
• 17:20
  about? One, one of the things that I find so exciting
• 17:24
  is when I help a client put together a
• 17:28
  message that actually helps them
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  talk about what they do. It's like
• 17:37
  the curtain lifts. I mean, and it has happened
• 17:41
  to me. My Be Found actually happened in real
• 17:44
  time at a networking event where there was somebody,
• 17:48
  you know, it was like a networking, you know, masterminding.
• 17:52
  Everybody was, you know, trying to help this person with their business.
• 17:56
  And I finally, out of frustration, said, do you have
• 18:00
  paying clients? They said yes. I said, do they love you? She said
• 18:04
  yes. I said, Then you don't have a
• 18:08
  client, you know, a service delivery issue. You have a client
• 18:11
  attraction issue. You don't need to be fixed. You need to be
• 18:15
  found. And everybody in that room went, hmm. And I was like,
• 18:19
  that's what I've been trying to get to. That's what I've been trying
• 18:23
  to say. And when
• 18:26
  I changed my message, when I started using that,
• 18:31
  I normally, you know, listed my event, I've done my workshop under a
• 18:35
  variety of different names and titles. But when I changed it to
• 18:39
  that, the 20 people that I normally got that signed up for the
• 18:42
  event that, you know, it may have taken me 10,
• 18:47
  10 days to 2 weeks, I got in 2 hours.
• 18:51
  Because we want to be found. Right? I'm looking for
• 18:55
  people that don't have a service delivery issue necessarily.
• 19:00
  They know what they want to do. They just can't find enough people to
• 19:04
  find them. Okay. So here we go. We
• 19:07
  talked about what the first 8 months of the year taught
• 19:11
  me. What did it teach you? What do you need to do
• 19:15
  so that clarity— you just
• 19:19
  need to refine your clarity. You just need to evolve it. You
• 19:23
  need to tweak it. Confidence needs
• 19:26
  action. What actions did you take in the first 8 weeks that actually—
• 19:30
  8 months rather— that actually got you results?
• 19:34
  And what is it that you can repeat consistently?
• 19:39
  Right? Those are the things that you need to take a little bit of
• 19:43
  time if you want to use the energy of going
• 19:46
  into fall, not just to be busy, but to actually grow
• 19:50
  your business. So take a minute and
• 19:54
  identify one of the things that you may be trying to solve
• 20:00
  and make sure that it's actually the real problem. Is the
• 20:03
  real problem the
• 20:07
  slides? I don't think so. It rarely is that. Is the real
• 20:11
  problem that not
• 20:15
  enough people are seeing you? Right? So what does
• 20:18
  that mean? Does that mean you do more networking? Does it mean that you speak
• 20:22
  on other people's platform? Identify the one
• 20:26
  thing and then see what has actually worked for
• 20:30
  you in the past.
• 20:34
  Then I want you to find an action that
• 20:38
  you've been resisting, something that you've said, I'm not ready
• 20:42
  for that. I'm not ready to do that. It could be Anything.
• 20:46
  It could be speaking, like I said, speaking on somebody else's platform. It could
• 20:49
  be taking advantage of that 30-minute phone call
• 20:53
  that was offered at the end of a workshop. Something
• 20:57
  that you would not have done at the first, the first part of the
• 21:00
  year. Do something different. You know the old saying, if you keep
• 21:04
  doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you got. Right? And
• 21:08
  that's the definition of insanity.
• 21:12
  All right, consistency.
• 21:16
  Identify the thing that's working
• 21:20
  and keep repeating it. Maybe multiply it. So
• 21:24
  if you are posting, you know, once a week,
• 21:28
  maybe now you can post twice a week. If you were speaking on
• 21:32
  one podcast, somebody else's podcast once a month, now
• 21:36
  up that so that maybe you're doing it 2 times a month. Right?
• 21:40
  Find a system that works for you. For me, probably the
• 21:44
  consistency is having my workshop every month.
• 21:49
  Now what I'm doing that I've decided to do is have a
• 21:52
  panel every other month. And in between, I want to
• 21:56
  be on somebody's podcast and I want to,
• 22:00
  um, or be on somebody else's summit.
• 22:04
  That has a good feel to me. And maybe in about, you know,
• 22:08
  a couple months after doing that, I'll decide I can do more.
• 22:12
  But for the time being, that's the way I want to show up because people
• 22:16
  know that my workshop is the 3rd Wednesday of every
• 22:20
  month. Right? They know that I'm running a
• 22:24
  panel. They know that I have a podcast
• 22:27
  and that I'm going to speak on other people's podcasts. All right.
• 22:31
  So, this is part of the challenge that I'm gonna give you starting in
• 22:35
  September. If you were one of the 75%
• 22:39
  that wanted something to change in 90 days,
• 22:44
  how long is it gonna take before you get started? If it takes you
• 22:48
  90 days to change something in
• 22:52
  90 days, that's not gonna really work, right?
• 22:58
  And you need to find something
• 23:01
  specific that you can do differently,
• 23:06
  right? That you're actually gonna do.
• 23:10
  So if you're thinking, I know something needs to change, but I'm not sure
• 23:14
  that I'm working on the right thing, you can always—
• 23:18
  we can always talk, right? You can come to my
• 23:22
  workshop the 3rd Wednesday of the month.
• 23:27
  All right. So
• 23:30
  I'm going to take a breath.
• 23:35
  And I'm going to say to you, remember at the beginning I said learning
• 23:39
  without applying it is just entertainment. So what am I going to do
• 23:43
  with what I learned? And, and, and God forbid, she's actually going to
• 23:47
  do another episode. So what we're gonna talk about is what you're gonna
• 23:50
  do less of, what you're gonna do more of, and what's new.
• 23:54
  And like I said, we want September to be back to energy
• 23:58
  month and not back to busy, right?
• 24:02
  So we want
• 24:06
  to figure out what can I subtract? What can I do more of already
• 24:09
  I'm doing? And is my focus right? And we're gonna talk about
• 24:13
  measuring. I'm probably one of the
• 24:17
  people who's very resistant to measuring, but
• 24:20
  you need it for validation, right? You absolutely do.
• 24:24
  And so, part of that has to do with what do you already have in
• 24:28
  your system that lets you do that? Because I
• 24:31
  think that's the easiest. It may not be, it may not be the greatest
• 24:35
  measure. It may not be the greatest thing to measure, but it's a
• 24:38
  baseline to get started. And I think,
• 24:43
  you know, one of the things that we can do is we can help each
• 24:47
  other. Because one of my goals is always
• 24:51
  to say to people, I hope that we're better off because we
• 24:55
  met than if we had never met. So I'm gonna,
• 24:58
  you know, check the notes. There's a book a call.
• 25:03
  There are a couple events coming up. There's some other things. But like I
• 25:07
  said, you may feel uncomfortable calling, booking that call,
• 25:12
  but what if you actually get something out of it
• 25:16
  that's gonna make your next client the closest? What are you willing,
• 25:20
  you know, if you figure out what your results are that you want, aside
• 25:24
  from I want more consistent clients, right? How
• 25:28
  many clients do you need to have
• 25:33
  to be able to invest in some support that'll make you get there
• 25:37
  faster. So if you say, I need to have—
• 25:42
  I want to make X number of dollars and I need to have X number
• 25:44
  of clients, you know, so you say, I want to, I want to make
• 25:48
  $200,000 a year, right? And
• 25:52
  I need 10 clients to do that.
• 25:56
  Let's say 20, you know, $240,000. 'Cause it's easy,
• 26:00
  right? So every month that you don't have, you don't meet that
• 26:04
  monthly goal, what is that costing you? If you could
• 26:08
  speed that up, because isn't that really what we do?
• 26:12
  We help people to focus, simplify
• 26:16
  things, streamline things so that they can get results faster.
• 26:20
  And that's what a call will do for you. So on that note,
• 26:25
  I hope that you've gotten something that you can take away that, that
• 26:29
  you can use immediately. And that
• 26:33
  means
• 26:34
  that
• 26:38
  you're going to look at clarity, confidence, and consistent
• 26:41
  clients and answer questions about that so that you can move
• 26:45
  forward faster. One of the things that I always like to say is it
• 26:48
  doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction. And
• 26:52
  that's why I think this call is important as you
• 26:56
  start to put your energy into, let's get a lot done,
• 27:00
  you know, before the end of the year. So remember,
• 27:04
  change is simple, but it's not always easy, and it requires
• 27:07
  courage and resilience and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.
• 27:12
  And so I hope that you will keep joining me for the One Small
• 27:15
  Change. And until then, be sure to check out the Be
• 27:19
  Found workshop. Be sure to give me a call, but more importantly,
• 27:23
  Stay very, very, very curious.
• 27:27
  I'm Yvonne McCoy. Until next time, bye.