Why Shame Has No Place in Your Business
I work with a few entrepreneurs every day who come to our sessions with their business partner, Shame.
Shame shows up in the way they feel compelled to give me excuses why their action steps from their last session remain incomplete.
Shame swallows their voice when they tell me they discounted their packages again even before someone had a chance to say no to their regular rate.
Shame gives them the side eye when they put out an offer or product into the marketplace and the first response from clients didn’t match their expectation.
Shame shuts down their next brilliant idea before it can even be developed because Shame won’t let them forget that people are watching for their success & their failures.
Sometimes I can see Shame come into our coaching call even before the client gets there. Call it intuition or the fact that they don’t immediately say Hi after I do. I see it in the way they don’t make eye contact with themselves, never mind me, sitting there patiently waiting for them to be ready to start our session. I feel it as they nervously rake their hands through their hair and struggle to bring their shoulders down from just under their ears. I hear it in their voice — deep, heavy, burdened with the weight of their decisions.
One of the best things I can do for my clients is to help them work with their fears as tools for getting things just right. But Shame? It has no place in your business.
The Re-Frame aka The De-Shame
No Action, No Reaction
Sometimes the client feels like the coach is disappointed if they didn’t have BIG action in between sessions. If you spend any time in the online entrepreneurial space, the pressure to make $35K in 35 minutes is INTENSE. But here’s the thing — your business coach isn’t just here for the outcomes. We are here for the process and sometimes that process includes taking a week off to run your business, spending time with family, rediscovering the joy of naps or binge watching a mindless show on Netflix.
This can cause a roller coaster of guilt as you think of downtime as taking away from your business.
You started your own business because you wanted to create something on your own terms. Own business. Own terms. So own it. Own the downtime and celebrate it just as much as you do the big action. If you’re doing big action 52 weeks of the year there is a good chance you’re going to have burn out.
So walk into that next session owning what you did accomplish during the previous week and make a more realistic action plan for the next week — one that won’t let Shame come in and have its way with you.
Low Rates, No Debates
Instead of re-hashing the lowering of your prices, we instead want to unpack the value of your actual rates. There is a reason you snuck in a discount without being asked and it’s because you know there is probably something missing from your package or product that would make it a HELL YES for your client. So let’s see what it is — it might even be that you haven’t fully explained the full value of what you’re offering out loud before. There is a big difference of building an offer in your head and hearing it out loud.
It might be a feature or benefit your clients would really love and building it not only makes you love your prices even more, but it gives the client an exclusive benefit they can’t get anywhere else. Also — it’s one client. You recognized right after that you didn’t feel good about doing it. Thank the experience for the valuable lesson and then do the work to make it unrepeatable.
No Offers, No Buyers
Working for yourself means you spend a lot of time pitching or marketing your products & services. Plus you make sure the products & services are delivered. You really wear all the hats, even if you have a great team — you’ve got your fingers on the pulse constantly. I just mixed two metaphors. Part of me feels really guilty about that but just like putting out an offer with no takers, I’m not going to stop doing it.
Sometimes we put out an offer at 11PM when everyone is in bed because that’s when we finished it. And then we stay up till 1AM anxiously hoping someone sees it, wants it and buys it. Unless your ideal client is in Australia when you live in North America, you’re probably not getting your offer in front of people when they are ready to buy.
So keep offering it. Keep pitching it. Keep putting it front of more people and see what their reaction is. Change up your marketing, increase your marketing. Keep asking WHAT WOULD MAKE THIS EVEN BETTER. Give yourself some room too — 1 day will not determine your business success. 90-365 days will start giving you some analytics to play with for future offers. Of which you will have many.
Don’t let Shame spiral you out of control. Don’t give it sleepless nights and groggy mornings. Don’t give it a raise but do give it a permanent vacation. You’ve got a business to run — a brilliant empire — and Shame has no idea even how to business so let it go and get back to owning it all yourself. You deserve it.
