Entrepreneurs often face a set of challenges that prevent them from reaching their full potential. In this blog post, we will explore some of the common obstacles they encounter and discuss hacks and frameworks to help them become more intentional and show up more powerfully. Let's dive into it.
Fear of Marketing
One surprising issue that emerged from a survey I conducted was the fear of marketing themselves and their services. This fear includes concerns about rejection, criticism, and competition. Consequently, entrepreneurs often fail to market consistently, opting instead to keep themselves busy with peripheral tasks that do not generate revenue.
Marketing is crucial for any business, as it leads to more conversations, clients, and ultimately success. Yet, many entrepreneurs procrastinate on this front, citing reasons like needing to perfect their websites. Overcoming this self-sabotage is essential for business growth.
Value and Pricing
Another significant challenge is pricing. Many entrepreneurs struggle to charge what they believe their services are worth, often due to a lack of confidence in their own value. This lack of belief can influence prospects, who may pick up on an entrepreneur's uncertainty.
The key is to understand that pricing is just a number, and the meanings attached to these numbers can be changed. Positive meanings allow entrepreneurs to charge what they are worth. Conversely, negative beliefs prevent them from doing so. Feeling underpaid can lead to frustration and strained client relationships.
Fear in Sales Conversations
Closely related to value perception is the fear associated with sales conversations. Many entrepreneurs dread these discussions because they fear rejection and personal criticism. However, rejection should never be taken personally; it's not a reflection of self-worth.
Rejection is merely feedback indicating that the offer may not be right for a prospect, or the value wasn’t clearly communicated. By seeking feedback, entrepreneurs can improve future sales conversations and approach them with curiosity rather than fear.
The Power of Not Taking Things Personally
A pivotal change in my life was learning to stop taking things personally. When faced with negativity or rejection, I remind myself that others may not be in a good place, rather than blaming myself.
This mindset shift allows for greater risk-taking and freedom, as rejection is no longer a personal affront. I also encourage my children to adopt this mindset: If you don't ask, you don't get. Being willing to ask is a significant advantage in life, as most people are too afraid to do so.
By addressing these challenges and adopting a more resilient mindset, entrepreneurs can unlock their potential and achieve greater success in their business endeavors.
Full Transcript
Let's talk about some of the problems that entrepreneurs are experiencing. They're making them live to a fraction of their potential and some of the hacks and frameworks that you give them so that they can be more intentional and show it more powerfully. Sure. Well, one of the biggest ones and this is one that I was quite surprised by, but I did a survey to my audience, to my through email, and I asked them, what is your biggest challenge to growing your business? And I wasn't expecting the answer that I got, but the biggest challenge was the fear of marketing themselves and their services or putting themselves out there. So when I dug around with this, it turned out there's a fear of rejection, fear of criticism, fear of not being smart enough, of no one to say, of the competition being better, and so on and so forth. And it's interesting because the behavior around this is that they don't market consistently. They are busy in their work, but they're not doing the focused, you know, client generating revenue generating work like outreach and making offers and having sales conversations, but they keep themselves busy doing the peripheral stuff. So we can kid ourselves, can't we that had a really busy day, but the end of the week there was an account. So the marketing is a really interesting one because it's a classic self sabotage. You get you, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll get around to implementing it. I just have to tweak my website a little bit more. So that is because we know the heart of most businesses, which is every business, the more composite, what the more marketing you do, the more conversations you have therefore the more clients you have. So that's a steady formula and a lot of people just don't do that first bit of marketing themselves. Another big challenge is around fees. Quite a few entrepreneurs I've come across aren't charging what they want to charge because they don't believe in their value. And then because they don't believe in their value, as you said that they put that perception on their prospects, they're not going to believe in my value. The thing is, you don't believe in your value. So how is anyone else going to believe in your value when you know that what you have to offer the client is way beyond any price you're charging for it. The prospect picks up that up, they pick up that certainty of confidence from you. So again, this is all internal work. The price is just a number, whether you're charging 1000 10,000 100,000 is just a neutral number. So we put our own meanings on that number. If the meanings are positive, hey, we'll go out there and we'll really charge what we're worth. If our meanings that we put on the numbers are negative, I either never pay that I'm not worth that etc. Then you'll never get around to charging what you're worth. And the funny thing that I found with clients who aren't charging what they want. They start feeling really. What's the word they start feeling frustrated. And they don't like working with their clients because they feel they're not getting enough back from their clients not paying them enough. So this has a really knock on effect in their client relationship as well. So if you're happy being paid what you're worth. You feel good about if you feel a client stop paying you enough because you haven't charged him enough. Then that doesn't feel good. Another big issue that I work with is fear of self conversations, which is very much tied in with the value that you charge. So having a sales conversation fills a lot of entrepreneurs with fear, so they don't put them in their calendar they don't look for them and again, are they afraid of rejection. Are they afraid of like, right. Yeah, and again, they're not going to go for what I've got they're not going to be interested. And how am I going to deal with a no. What does it say about me they're rejecting me personally. And so, I will say, a rejection is never rejecting you in who you are. No one is able to reject who you are in this world. It's not possible. You are rejection proof. All they're saying is that it's not right for them, or you haven't shown them the value of it. Yeah, so if you can, if you can stop taking things personally and this for me was one of my biggest turnarounds in my life. I stop taking things personally. So if someone says no to me, or they say something unpleasant to me. I always think, oh, that's interesting. They're not, if it's something unpleasant, they're not a good place right now. And I never think, oh, I caused him to say that about me. It's my fault. I always automatically go to, they're not a good place right now. I wonder what's going on in their lives. If a client says no to me or a prospect says no to me. I just think, I just get curious. Yeah, what was it and I just say, can you give me some feedback about what you didn't want to go ahead, because they'll be really, really, it'd be really valuable for me. And so we end up having a conversation about, you know, what was right for them and that gives me so much more I can add into my next sales conversation. And no is still a gift and no is still a gift. So when you stop taking things personally, then you get really curious about life and about people and what's going on in their heads. And it just freed me up to be a bigger risk taker, because I can ask for things because I don't mind when people say no. He's not tied up in the day to day. My value is not tied up with them saying no to me and that's so freeing. And I always say to my children, if you don't ask, you don't get. And this is one of my rules in the world. If you don't ask, and most people are too scared to ask. So the people who do ask, they've got really big head start in life. |