Seven Nuggets I Learned About Entrepreneurship From My Clients

What I love most about coaching my high level clients is how much I learn during our conversations. Of course, I share all sorts of advice, insights and strategy and yet there are many times that I grab my pen and paper and write down something that one of us said during our discussion.

Here are seven golden nuggets that came out of recent conversations with my clients.

1. During a sales conversation remember that your prospect is in a place of extreme vulnerability, fear and often shame. People don’t come to sales conversations for fun. They come because they need something. On some level they are frustrated. They are suffering. There is a lack. They are at a place of extreme vulnerability. They often share things with you that they don’t tell anyone else. If things were good they wouldn’t be talking with you. They are exposing their weaknesses.

You MUST respect them and you must help them understand the depth of the pain that they are in. You do this not to be mean but instead to help them see a way out. Treat them kindly and don’t hold back. They came to you for help, and if you are the right person to help, you must offer them an opportunity to get that help and resolve the problem that they are experiencing. Show them a way out. Be real. Be honest. Be kind and firm. They need your help. Tell them how you can help them, how much it will cost and then let them make a decision.

2. Perfection and procrastination always defeats progress. Perfectionism and procrastination feed on each other. Between the two of them they defeat progress. When you see perfectionism or procrastination rearing up its head ask yourself what is stopping you from progress? Are you trying to make it perfect? What would happen if you decided it was done right then? While it’s true that perfection and procrastination defeat progress, progress can win out if you let it.

3. You can start to sell the solution immediately so long as you understand the benefit. You don’t have to study or learn more in order to sell it. As long as you are confident that when it comes time to deliver what you sold, you can start to sell the benefits right now. You don’t need every detail. You need to know that you can do it and will be able to do it, that you have the resources to be able to deliver it.

4. Stop putting obstacles in your own way. How often do you think you’ll do that right after you do a bit more research or some other thing? On the one hand it sounds reasonable but oftentimes you are deliberately (but maybe not consciously) putting an obstacle in your own way. Do you already have what you need to do the next step?

5. Stop measuring your worth by what you are trying to escape. A client of mine was unhappy with the way her business and programs were structured. She wasn’t happy with what she was doing and she wasn’t happy with the results her clients were getting.

As we restructured her business and put prices on her new programs we found out that we created exactly what she already had. We need to stop ourselves from automatically going forward and take a moment to realize that while technically what she had in place was right it wasn’t working for her. We needed to look at what she was moving to and to shift our thinking to put ourselves into a new reality. We needed to understand what benefits her clients would receive from working with her. It's important to not value yourself only on your past results, you also need to look at what you are doing with your clients today & how you want to be working with them going forward.

Remember, you are more than your past jobs. You are more than your past clients. What do you have to offer today?

6. You can’t be in control unless you have enough knowledge to be in control. One of the reasons many of my clients went into their own businesses was to take control. They wanted control of their day-to-day existence. They wanted to control their time off and who they interacted with. They wanted to control the type of work they did. Owning your own business does put you in control; however, in order to be in control you need knowledge. Without that knowledge you will be at the mercy of your business, your clients, your products and your bank account.

Hire people to teach you what you need to know. Get guidance and mentorship to give you knowledge. Knowledge will put you in control.

7. Cheap does not equal quality. You know this and I know this yet it sometimes needs repeating. There are times it makes sense to save money and go the cheap route and other times when it is important to spend more and get quality.

What lessons do you learn from your clients?