GPFYC 019: Dealing With Self Doubt, Pricing & Hiring The Right Business Mentor

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This week I decided to bring back something I used to do when I originally launched the Get Paid For Your Creativity podcast, Q & A days.

Originally I thought I’d offer them on Wednesday’s (that was when I was planning to do a five day a week show) but now with a once a week show I’ve decided to offer them when I have either enough questions being sent it by listeners like yourselves or once a month, whichever comes first.

So if you want me anything about your business, even one you’re thinking about starting, marketing tips, life challenges you’re facing personally, professionally, send them in and I’ll do my best to answer them on future episodes.

Of course if you don’t want your name used just tell me that I respect everyone’s anonymity, usually I’ll just reference your first name as a way to introduce the question.

Now, if you’d like to send me question that you’d like me to address on a future episode of the show I’m going to give you three ways to do here:

1. Visiting my website at getpaidforyourcreativity.com and click on the red “Send Voicemail” tab on the right side of the blog. You can leave a short, message I believe up to two minutes so be brief, be clear and get to the point. In other words if it’s a short question use the “Send Voicemail” tab hosted by Speakpipe.

2. Another way is to call my business voice for a longer message and that number is 1-858-413-7526. Even though you can talk longer I still appreciate it if you get to the point quickly and be clear, so give your question some thought before you call that way I can serve you better with my answer.

3. The final way is good old fashion email. You can email your question to: [email protected]

This has been a very interesting week in the fact that I’ve had three separate interactions with three different individuals with one thing in common. They are experiencing some struggling in the areas of finance and business so I’d thought “why not address them via a podcast?”

Now before I go any further I’m not using real names, I’m not about outing anyone, but I know in my heart that the things I’m about on today’s may resonate with some of you, perhaps these are things that’ either you’ve either struggled with at some point in your life, or you know someone who’s going through similar.

Since these questions slash comments are very similar I’ve decided to answer them together because I really feel this is an opportunity for growth and healing for everybody listening especially in the areas of personal responsibility.

Throughout the interactions the common theme I’m keep seeing is taking responsibility for ones results.

Responsibility comes from making choices about what actions we should or should not take.

In either case the results of those decisions are ours. What I have found in the coaching world ~ in the particular the business coaching world is what I find the “feel good” mentality which I’m personally find unsettling.

In other words people making business/financial decisions based on how someone or event or music or lighting, clapping or shaking our booties or enticement of horderves makes us feel.

In a typical business coaching event setting there’s a lot of emphasis on emotions, getting to the heart of what’s really going on, often tears are shed, bottom line, emotions are running high and in my opinion sound judgement is not the curriculum vitae.

In other words if you’re making a decision to hire someone to help you with your business and you can barely see the check because of the tears in your eyes (be it either from joy, fear or relief that you’ve found your “tribe” that understands you) you might want to take a step back and let some of that energy run through you before you start making financial decisions that affect your future based on a intensified emotion.

Now I want to be clear I’m not putting down business coaching or the coaching industry, I offer business coaching, but before you hire a coach in my opinion you should try to get as clear as you can about where you’re at currently and what you’re needing to move forward.

Take the intensified emotion out of the equation and give yourself the gift of time in order to achieve clarity about your true needs.

Here is my recipe for getting clear about your needs before hiring anyone to help you with your business.

Is the business you’re considering viable? In order for a business to be viable it needs to address three things.

Will this business you’re considering serve you in all three of these areas:

1. Emotionally/mentally?

2. Physically?

3. Financially?

Let me me explain, if you’re trying to get a business going but you’re having a hard time getting clients or customers, most likely you’re not talking to either a.) the right target audience, b.) you’re addressing the wrong problem, c.) you’re offering the wrong solution.

In either instance you’re going to struggle needlessly. I say needlessly because if you keep going after the wrong people, or the right people with the wrong thing, eventually your confidence is going to get tired of getting kicked in the teeth.

Now you have an emotional/mental problem as well as financial one. And if you’re worried about money all the time you’re probably not getting enough rest and so your physical well being is put in jeopardy.

It just creates this vicious cycle and it’s at this point that many want-to-be-entrepreneurs grab for the nearest information product that promises to turn things around but rarely if ever does because ~ go back over that list of three reasons why your stuff probably isn’t selling enough.

The option is to hire a business coach. Like I said nothing wrong with it, I recommend it, but ~ before you consider hiring a coach do your homework. What’s your homework?

Get clear about the current state of your business.

Ask yourself: Am I start up, usually making under $100,000.00? Typically much less than that. Do I have a business that’s viable meaning is it serving me financially, emotionally/mentally and physically?

If it isn’t that fine, but use this level of awareness to help you explore and investigate which coach or programs might be right for you. Finally don’t allow financial pressure to entice you to make an unsound business decision.

If you can’t afford to pay your mortgage or rent a business coach probably can’t tell you anything that’s going to make any significant difference in your current circumstances.

This brings me to the coaches responsibility. While I know there are some wonderful, caring people out there dedicated to helping others. I’d be doing you a huge disservice by suggesting there aren’t charlatans out there looking to make a quick buck offering nothing more than empty promises of overnight wealth.

Hopefully your BS radar is tuned in high enough that you can detect this type of foolishness when it presents itself and make the conscious decision to move on quickly. But again, this goes back to making business decisions based on facts, not emotions.

So back to the coaches responsibility to you. Simply your coach can only work with what you bring to them. In other words if you’re financially, mentally and physically broken don’t expect a business coach or any coach for that matter to fix you. It’s not their responsibility.

Part of your responsibility to be honest with them about where you’re at. And for you to listen to them to see if they have the expertise to meet you where you’re at.

So if you’re a start up and the coach you’re considering specializes in 7-figure businesses, they probably aren’t the coach for you. At least not now.

But if you’re just getting started and you need some support to place legs under your business there are coaches that specialize in that, but ~ it’s up to you to be honest with yourself.

Nothing with exploring the options available to you but leave your wallet at home until you know what you need.

Now this brings me to a question about confidence.

I read a comment recently written by someone who I know to be an extremely capable and very talented entrepreneur that read ~ I don’t have self doubts around my business value and contribution, just about me as a person ~ end quote. I found this statement very intriguing because quite frankly I don’t get the separation.

When you’re a one man/women show or solo operation the results you get in your business fall solely on you. Who else would they fall on? For example, you can’t blame the sales staff for low numbers. You are the sales staff!!

So if you doubt yourself as a person wouldn’t it stand to reason that that thinking would affect your business results? If you doubt yourself then doubt is in charge and guess what? Doubt is running the show. It’s deciding what opportunities to look at and which ones to ignore. It’s deciding who to call that could help you and who to shy away from. Doubt is fear.

I don’t want to sound harsh, but you’re kidding yourself if you think that you don’t also doubt your abilities (at least to some degree) in your business. You are the business and the business is you ~ ALL OF YOU!

And where fear lives nothing else can.

My suggestion is you decide who’s running the show, what do you want?

What are you going to do to get it! Doubt, fear and all.

Finally this brings me to confidence.

Many of us falsely believe that confidence is something we go out and get, then we act on our dreams. WRONG! Confidence come because we take action ~ especially when we “don’t know what we are doing”

Books:

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series) – http://amzn.to/1lQK9Ae

Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career (The 99U Book Series) – http://amzn.to/1nf5R2D

Think and Grow Rich Prosperity Cards (Tarcher Inspiration Cards) – http://amzn.to/NUSZPa

Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller – Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Napoleon Hill – http://amzn.to/1en8XrN

Listen to GPFYC Podcast Episode 14 – One of my most popular – “Taking Care of The CEO Inside” – https://getpaidforyourcreativity.com/14

Retweetables:

Click to Tweet: Trust, then get out of the way – http://ctt.ec/Qqa3U

Click to Tweet: Where fear lives nothing else can. http://ctt.ec/NeKR2

Click to Tweet: “You can’t fix a problem with the same mentality that created it” http://ctt.ec/b3_61

Additional Resources:

Speakpipe – http://speakpipe.com

So I hope that you got some value out of today’s Q&A session/teaching lesson. If you found value it what I shared today or have you comments again please leave your comments below.

On that page you can share your comments with me about today’s episode.

A couple of other things.

Come connect with me on Facebook. I’d love to connect with you there, you can see what I’m up to between episodes, I share a lot things that I don’t always post on the blog and as a matter depending upon when you’re listening to this episode I’m about to embark on a major project that will center around social media in particular Facebook.

I’ll talking more about that project in the coming episodes but just know that April is going to be a major month for Get Paid and I want to connect with listeners there.

To make sure that you do that I want to give you an incentive. It’s a copy of one of my Kindle books in the Get Paid series: 57 Ways To Monetize Your Gifts (And Create True Security For Yourself!

In this book I share all kinds of inspirational nuggets and tips that you can use to get the most important asset in your business and your life running smooth. Your mind.

I currently sell this book Amazon but I’d like you to have it for free no strings attached just listening to the show. To grab that go to https://getpaidforyourcreativity.com/57gift and there you’ll find details to claim your copy.

I’ll also leave that link in the show notes as well in case you’re driving or at the gym while listening to today’s show.

And come back for next week’s episode it’s going to be a really special celebration as I’ll be posting my 20 episode of the podcast. Who knows, I might even pop open a bottle of Sparkling Apple Juice, maybe even champagne. But I think I’ll save that for 100th episode!  We’ll see 🙂

So until then, keep your spirits and your head up, you can’t see the stars looking down at the ground.