Patty shares a story about moving forward. This experience is related to her father’s passing and handling his estate. She found 9 dealer issued keys for her dad’s car. This was her mom’s doing. She always wanted the confidence of a back-up key.
When a key was left in a coat pocket, she’d go get a new one, just in case.
Patty shares how she sees this play out with prospective clients. It’s something that we all do. For you, it might not be a key. It might be the need for another class, or certification.
Where are you putting conditions on moving forward? Hear how to recognize this pattern and see it for what it is. Patty outlines what to do to get past the need for your missing key.
Don’t miss the final 5 minutes where Patty breaks down how this impacts how we sell and offer value. This can be the key to putting forward your absolute best.
What do you truly want?
What’s holding you back from getting it?
Is it a real thing, or are you waiting for the comfort of a back-up key?
Transcript
(00:02) Welcome to the wealth and purpose podcast where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to creating wealth in a way that feels really good and live their purpose fully in the process. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex type A corporate banker, turned intuitive business coach. I’m also a wife, a mom to two preteens, a professor, girl scout leader in. Well, hey, you get it. Like you, I wear a lot of hats. Whether you’re looking for inspiration to get started or strategies to get growing. I am here to help you create abundance in every area of your life in business.
Welcome
Today’s podcasts I’m going to give you a blend of storytelling around moving forward with dealing with my dad’s estate and also tied back to what I see so often. For many people who are trying to accomplish something or get to a place where they feel better or more successful or more something
(01:08) And what typically holds people back? So I am in the process as I’ve talked about in past podcasts. I’m in the process of being the executrix of my father’s estate, and executrix is what they call executors who are female. We’ll just live with that title. And one of the things that I was doing this past week was preparing the title and paperwork so that we could sell his car. And in the process of gathering up the keys to the car, I found that we had nine dealer issued keys. If you know anything about dealer issued keys, you know they’re fairly expensive, you know, I’m guessing he paid $30 or $40, so it wasn’t an electronic key fob. So I mean these were pricey investments to be investing in nine, and we found many, many other keys as well. So keys was definitely a big thing for my parents.
(02:14) And as I was laughing about this, remembering them, I made up a story about what I think probably happened. I don’t think it was my father who got these nine keys, I suspect it was my mother. She tended to be anxious around stuff with the car. So she passed away seven years ago, and there’s nine keys and the car itself is 16 years old, and that pretty much goes to a key a year while she was alive. And my guess is she lost the first key, and you know, it was probably in the house somewhere. And so she went and got another one because she didn’t want to be without a backup key – that would make her very nervous. And then over the course of the years, she just would misplace keys and not find them. And probably somehow in processing all of the things in their home after my dad passed, we uncovered where all these missing keys were.
(03:12) And it made me smile, you know because it’s a quirk and it’s a lovable quirk from my mom. But one thing that always broke my heart a little bit is my mom worried about things that she didn’t have to worry about. And if she had just slowed down and really grounded herself on could the key really be missing or just spend a little time not trying to fix the discomfort she had at not having that extra key and just searched around to see if she had the key already and it was just missing. Had she just spent that time, she would discover that not only did you have an extra key. She had an extra, you know, first and extra two keys and then an extra three keys and at some point, even if she had just done this right before she got the last key, she would have found out she had eight extra keys and by the way, they didn’t just have nine dealer issued keys.
(04:09) they had two keys that looked like they were made in some weird back alley place (Also fitting the car) and I put a little story out on that on Facebook, and I’ve had some interesting conversations around it because to me it seemed like a really good metaphor for how most of us go through life. And certainly what I see with a lot of my clients before they become clients, when they come to me, they are missing something, right? That’s why typically people will hire a coach is, “I want something I don’t yet have some experience in my business”, in my case because I’m a business coach, but I want some experience, and there’s a gap between where I am and where I’m going, and I need help filling that gap. You know, hiring a coach to help you bridge the gap is definitely a good thing.
(05:00) I do it. I’m always working with a coach and when I’m not working with a coach, I feel it. I feel the loss. So there’s nothing wrong with, you know, looking for help, but it’s where you look for help and what you specifically think will fix it. And oftentimes when I’m talking to prospective clients, we talk about, okay, “well what, what have you done?” And things that will come up are things like, um, you know, I work with a lot of coaches and consultants, and so for them it’s often things like certifications and masters degrees and just feeling like they’re not qualified enough and so they just need to go get this other thing, this key that validates them. And what I also see is, I know the person will tell me “I know what I need, but I haven’t made enough money to in it yet”.
(05:58) And sometimes that can be a factual reflection on where that person is. So for instance, if someone was brand new in business and they wanted to hire me, that might not be a good investment, right? Because I’m a better coach for people who are established and my rates reflect it because the growth I create for my clients is quick and it’s substantial. But you also benefit from that coaching much more if you’re further along in business. So if you were to come to me and you were brand new, it might not make sense for you to invest in me and that’s reasonable. But if it’s something like “I’m not going to buy a new computer until I make more money” and yet the speed of the computer is keeping you from having a successful experience of your business. That doesn’t make a lot of sense or worse.
(06:54) You’re at the point where you really should be investing in a coach or some other type of help, and you’re not, and you keep waiting for that extra money to give you permission to invest when in fact you’re not going to get that money until you invest. And it gets confusing. And one of the most interesting experiences I had of this recently was with a client who came to me. She was making multiple six figures, and she wanted to make more money but also to feel excited about doing it. She just didn’t feel excited anymore. And so we’ve been putting together different strategies to grow her business in a direction that would feel really good to her, giving her more freedom to speak about the things she wants to in her marketing, really honing her client list and getting rid of clients that were dragging her down.
(07:53) And then of an even bigger piece, the way she was investing in herself, how she was treating herself, the amount of time she was taking for herself and through this journey, she realized she needed to hire a house cleaner. Now if you’re like me, you don’t need a lot of money to decide that you need a house cleaner. Like cleaning my house is probably one of the most creatively draining experiences for me unless I’m in the mood to clean. Having to clean makes me feel like a slave and there’s no judgment on people who clean. Some people are built that way. They are built where cleaning is an experience that makes them feel better. For me, decluttering is one of those things, I don’t enjoy cleaning, but if you brought me into your house to declutter and get rid of years of stuff, I would be thrilled.
(08:50) I love doing that, but cleaning things just drains me, and so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to do my own cleaning because that’s draining all of the juice out of me that would actually help me make money. Make more money and attract money into my life. Now my client wasn’t quite at the level that I am around cleaning, but definitely, cleaning was draining her. And so she decided to hire a house cleaner. And I was a little surprised that she didn’t have one already because she travels for business, she’s got kids, her husband works. And so she was talking about it, and we were celebrating the fact that she made this courageous decision for herself. And I asked her, you know, why she hadn’t done it sooner? And she said, you know, I just didn’t feel like I was making enough money yet.
(09:41) And in that perspective, she didn’t think she had enough money “Keys” to justify hiring a house cleaner. And I asked her what that amount would be. Now remember she was already making a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, and the cleaning person is (about where she lives) is about $250 a month. And so I asked her, you know, what would be the amount of money that would, you would have felt justified before understanding how important this was. And she said $500,000. So she would need to be making half a million dollars before she felt that she was, she had the permission of herself or the world or whatever to have someone come and help her with the cleaning. And I will say she does really important work in the world. The clients that come to me, the clients I work with are purpose-driven, heart-led people. So everyone I work with has a bigger purpose in the world.
(10:42) They have a desire to help other people to change for the better the world in some way that is based on love. So, you know, I don’t have any clients, including her, that are out there saying like, “I want to make more money to make more money”. You know, so having an investment in a service that lets her go out and do her work in the world isn’t just about helping her make more money. It’s about helping her have more impact. It’s about helping her help more people in a more powerful way. And we laughed about the fact that the number she had in mind was half a million dollars, that that would justify a $250 investment a month in a house cleaner. But the funny thing is, I mean, I’m sure it’s usually our blind spot is where we’re being ridiculous about not giving ourselves permission to go after what we want.
(11:35) And I know I probably have those blind spots and I’m not even seeing them, but I will just offer to you that it’s helpful for you to look at. Where are you holding yourself back right now and thinking you can’t do something. Ask for something, purchase something, invest in something because you’re not at a level where you deserve it yet or where you think you can or vice versa. Where are you thinking you’re going to go acquire something you like a degree or maybe you know, until I have a better job, I can’t go for the relationship or until I have a better relationship. I can’t buy the home or whatever conclusions you’ve made about your journey. Where are you putting conditions on going after something you want and where are those conditions keeping you from having a really grounded and comfortable experience of the world and is it possible that what you thought you needed isn’t really accurate, that maybe what you need to go after, what you want already exists within you.
(12:54) This is a big part of what I work on with my clients around sales and whether you’re an entrepreneur and you sell something yourself or you work in a corporation, and you have to sell to clients, or you’re selling yourself into the next job opportunity, or you’re in a relationship and you need to sell your partner on something you desire like a vacation or something else. We all use sales in our lives. Sales is the process of exchanging something for something. Asking for value in return for value and selling someone on an idea is the same skills you would use as selling someone your product or service. And when we look at the inner game of sales with my clients, there are often places that the sales game gets disrupted. And so often someone will come to me and say, you know, I’m not good at sales, and that’s part of the reason why they’re coming to me to work with me.
(14:00) Or they want to get more sales, and they don’t know how to do it. And they think there’s these things outside themselves, or they think the external, a performance of sales is really their problem. Like, I don’t know how to have a good sales conversation. I don’t know how to write good sales copy, stuff like that. And certainly there are some skills involved in sales that you can learn, but that will only take you so far. That’s that outer game of sales. It’s important. But if you don’t master the inner game of sales, you’re never going to get to a place where you’re happy and comfortable with sales. You’ll get to a place where you might be good enough, but it will always be uncomfortable for you. And that discomfort eventually drains joy. So with the inner game of sales, there’s a number of different points along the sales journey that I find trip people up, but probably the biggest one.
(14:54) And if you are having any thoughts that yeah, sales is an issue for me. This is what I would suggest that you look at when you think of offering your product or your service to your ideal client. What are your thoughts about the price and about their willingness to pay the price? So often I see my clients underpricing what they’re offering or if they’re really struggling with that point in the sales conversation of actually saying their price. And there’s a number of exercises that I give my clients to do to really have a new relationship to that price. And I’ll tell you, I’m not always a big proponent of raising prices when someone’s uncomfortable at this stage. Sometimes you have to stay at that lower price until you get comfortable with simply asking for money for who you are. But most likely if someone’s working with me, they’re at some level of comfort with that.
(16:00) And so to go bigger with the price and bolder with the offer, which by the way, always translates into a more positive experience for your client. I promise you that what has to happen is you (or my client), must, drop down into themselves and really feel into the value of what they offer. And oftentimes when they don’t feel that value, it’s because they’ve incorporated past clients performance with their product or service, which oftentimes has more to do with the way that client showed up. Meaning the client didn’t show up at 100%. The client didn’t use the product or the service, to its fullest power and as a result didn’t get the fullest benefit. But even then, when we break it down, it’s easy to see that they got value for what they invested. And so I would tell you right now, if this is something that comes up for you, really look inside yourself and ask yourself, where do I feel I’m not enough?
(17:09) Where do I feel my product and service isn’t enough? And really follow the trail of that conversation within yourself. Because when you get and don’t give up, keep going and going and going because when you get to the heart of it, what you’ll probably find when you try and find actual proof is it has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with you not being able to guarantee the way that your client shows up and that’s just like my mom searching for another key to make her feel better. There was a never-ending journey because she kept losing them and when you’re searching to find value, what you do based on the way your clients show up, that is not a journey that’s going to take you where you need to go. Now there’s things you can do to make sure that you only allow in clients who can fully utilize what you do.
(18:00) Once you’ve done that, then what you need to do is truly surrender to the journey and show up fully. Because when you do that, that’s when you put forward your best possible work. And again, this happens in every aspect of life. You know when you’re struggling to, have a conversation with your partner about a vacation you want to go on, and they’re pushing back on you. Oftentimes it’s your resistance to own that this is really what you want, and you’re worrying about what experience they’re going to have there. But that’s their responsibility. That’s not your responsibility. And when you’re looking at selling yourself in a corporate situation, when you’re looking at a job, you’re looking at worrying at that personal thing that you’re bragging, or you know what, if you are talking about yourself in a way that makes you seem egotistical are more important than you are.
(18:58) Women suffer from this way more than men, I find. But I think everyone that’s led by their heart has been trained to sort of keep themselves humble, and build up other people. The problem is when you don’t own the full glory of who you are, and you don’t get the full glory of your life experience. So today I will just say, look at what you truly want and what’s holding you back from getting it. And really question – is that truth or is that just an allusion you’ve created for yourself to keep you stuck in that feeling of insecurity? And if it is, what do you need to do to let go of it? I, for one, know that everything that’s a desire within your heart you already have within you what you need to achieve it. So go out. Make something new, happen for yourself. Be Brave. Be Glorious. Yes, that is exactly who you were born to be.
(20:01) Hey, thanks for listening. And if you know someone who needs to hear this message, please share this podcast with them. And if you’re feeling really generous, I love for you to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps us reach many more people, and it fills my heart with so much joy when I hear what you had to say about what you heard. I am cheering for your success. Have an amazing day.
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