S23EP01: I Can Get You Any Client - With Sarah and Linley

Welcome to One Insight. My name is Rich Litvin. I grew up in London and I now live in LA. And this is a podcast for extraordinary top performers and their coaches. You see, I've coached some of the most successful and talented people on the planet. I can see what most people cannot see, and I dare to say what most people wouldn't dare to say.

And what I know about success is that on the other side of it, it can be incredibly lonely. You can feel more of an imposter the more successful you become. And when you're the most interesting person in the room, you're actually in the wrong room. Clients who are more successful, more intelligent, and wealthier than you need your support more than they know and more than you can imagine. I coach around insight.

Life looks one way. Something happens, and the world looks different, and your entire world changes. It can happen in And this podcast is called One Insight because a single insight can change everything. The secret to my success is over 15 years guiding some of the most extraordinary coaches on the planet to the highest levels of success.

In this season of the podcast, you're going to be able to listen to me and watch me coaching some of the extraordinary coaches in my community who have attended the RLI, the Rich Litvin Intensive. You hear more about that as I work with them. It's one of the secrets behind the magic that we do.

Enjoy. In this season of the podcast, I'm bringing along people who are coming to my next intensive. I each time if I can, I'm working with one person who has already been a client of mine in some form or other, and someone who's never worked with me before, and I'm coaching them two at a time on the same course. Today, you're gonna see me, hear me, watching, working with Sarah and Lindley. And I play a game that I'd love to play called I Can Get You Any Client.

And we come back to the same thing with both of them. What we're looking for is simplicity. We make it very complex in what we're doing, what we ought to do, and we bring it down to one or two simple principles. And they each walk away with a takeaway that's going to shift everything for them into the future.

So enjoy the conversation. If you're interested, uh uh search for Rich Litvin Intensive online or click the link uh that we have somewhere around here because we've got almost a hundred people signed up already. There's a there's a handful more spots available.

Love to take you on a personal journey with me. We've been doing these for over a decade, two, sometimes four a year. We've not done an in-person one in five years. We're going to be in Santa Fe and we've got a virtual one coming up too. So it's going to be some exciting times around client creation.

Almost every member of 4PC, my private community of very successful coaches, they're all coming. And they're coming for a reason, because sometimes one insight, one distinction, one tool can make you tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Come and join me and enjoy the rest of this episode.

Let's play today around the question How can I help you to create your next client? And then we'll see what comes from there. So hi Lindley, we know each other. You were at a deep dive with me. I know a little bit about your business and what you've done in the past. Tell me, how can I help you create your next client?

Well actually I have my next client sitting on my laptop in a in a waiting to be fine-tuned file. So this is a perfect question, actually. My I you know, you inspired me, the last conversation we had, to really focus on mission-driven leaders. And I was received a request from a major financial institution locally here to do leadership coaching for their entire C-suite, eight people. And I'm a little nervous putting it out there as I haven't worked.

as extensively in the well, it's a credit union, but it's kind of a a for-profit nonetheless. Technically not a for-profit, but I haven't worked in that side of the universe. And this is a really significant contract, a year-long contract, if not more, with lots of cool things built in. And I'm excited about it and I'm really nervous about it. And so I want to write

authentically and I want to deliver what I know is true and necessary for them to evolve into the next space. So I think that would probably be helpful in my Year of expansion. Okay, turn it into a question for me. How do I produce? Exactly what the client needs. and be unattached to the outcome. Oh the the age of passion that goes back thousands of years. and be unattached to the outcome. Let's see if we can solve that one.

Okay, I've got some questions for you. Let me pause that for a second and bring Sarah into the room and then we'll see where we go. So hi Sarah. We don't know each other. We've never met before. And then when before the call started, I said that to you. And you said, well, I've been orbiting for a while. Tell me, how do you know I even exist?

Yeah. You know, a year ago, Rich, I received an email back from you from an inquiry to your program. And that email had a very simple sentence that said, I made you a video. And I dismissed it. I didn't even open it because I thought it was a marketing funnel. And then a few months later, I opened it. And you had taken the time to make a personal video in response to the questions that I'd sent you over email. And I burst into tears.

'Cause I felt so supported, so blown away. I could feel your frequency coming through the ether over the technology. And I had already read Prosperous Coach because some coaches that I had gotten to know as I'd gone through my own training and come into the field and started to find my footing kept routing me back to you, routing me back to you, routing me back to you.

Because I was trying to figure out how do I do this thing in the most authentic way to me. Nothing I'm seeing out there on how to represent myself or create a thriving practice. is something that I want to wake up every day and spend half my energy on. So how do I do this? I'm here to be of service and help shepherd souls and a very spiritual orientation. And there's these really 3D practical aspects of building and creating a thriving practice.

that I'm still in a place of challenge. So my circle keeps routing me back to you, routing me back to you, routing me back to you. And now I will finally be there in person in Santa Fe so that I can join the community fully. in that nervous system experience and integrate the learning on a cellular level. Nice. Well the universe is clearly pulling us together because

I I I read almost every email that comes into the team inbox. I don't have time to reply to everyone. Sometimes Laura replies to most of them. Once in a while I see one or Laura will flag one up for me that has me really drawn to somebody.

I'll often click on a link to their website, find a little bit about them. I don't just reply to anybody. So if I made you a video and if it's that long ago, I don't recall in this moment what I said, it means there was something about you that had me go, oh, I I wanna connect.

No coincidence that you're here on this call then, because the universe designed it that way. I didn't know you were going to be here. And I think someone else was supposed to be on this call and you got a last-minute call from the team. Like someone pulled out and they asked you to if you're Yeah, even even more perfect for the universe. I broke my rules last night and I slept with my phone in my bed right next to my head instead of across the room.

And I slept in and I picked up my phone and checked my email on with my phone right over my face, which are things I never do. I usually have the phone far away and I go straight to the meditation cushion. And I saw that email on 30 minutes notice. So yeah, the universe is pulling me here. Yeah. Delighted to be here. Yeah. Love it. So so give me a question then. Let me help you. You're gonna be with us at our intensive and sound of faith, but let's start now. I can get you any clients.

I mean it's the two biggest areas. the art of having the conversation one at a time. How to more powerfully talk in story to attract. those ideal clients rather than to speak at, I think. And the area where I know there's the most contraction is when I have coached powerfully, because there's such incredible feedback there from the clients themselves. I'm not quite yet in the art of carrying that through to an active client. So the logistics, the details.

I lose the momentum. I lose the the energy. For both of us. What's the question?

Well, let me see if I've heard it correctly and then we'll find out if I got the question from that. Sometimes I can read between the lines. Tracking it backwards, what I heard is actually the thing I'm very thing I'm gonna talk to Lindley about, which is about there's someone who really wants to work with you, how do you turn that from someone who really wants to work with you

What steps do I take to have them go, yeah, wow, I'm in? How do I get out of my head? How do I create a powerful proposal? How do I have someone go from, yeah, this was amazing. I love this coaching experience. I admire who you are, the stuff that you've done that feels really good. You can help us. So here's the check. Yeah. Yeah, then Lee, you too, right? That's that's exactly what you're asking about. Yeah.

And and everything else, you know, that art of the conversation, how do you create powerful stories, how do you attract your ideal clients? Let's pause that for now. You're gonna be at the intensive in Santa Fe, you're gonna be at the virtual intensive too. We're gonna dive into all of those things.

But let's handle this one because it's a really key one and I can do it in real time with Lindley over a real issue. And then Sarah, is there someone right now who you have served powerfully very recently? And you don't know what to do to have them take the next step to send you a a check or why you the money. I have three.

Okay, great. Great. So we'll come to those in a moment. Think about the one who resonates the most right now, the one, oh my God, I'd love to work with this one. And we'll come to that person. Uh Lily, let me come back to you because as I'm working with each of you, we're working on the same thing here. First of all, I hear you making up a story.

The story I hear you making up, and you tell me if I've got this right or wrong, is that my background in the social sector, the work I've done with organizations around homelessness and refugees and things like that. That might be really significant, very powerful, made a lot of impact, helped them generate a lot of fundraising and so on. But here, this is a for-profit company. So I'm a little baby, I know nothing. Why would they even hire me?

Somewhat. Actually, I've been doing some work, Rich, because you've inspired me in that space. And I am I'm fully capable of handling this contract. It's really positioning the language and the actual delivery of the contract because I'm already down the road in seeing what it looks like. them. And so I have done this type of work on a smaller scale with a less well-funded institution. Well, first of all, I was exaggerating for effect. Yeah. I'm glad you've done the work.

Sarah, can you relate to that feeling of like, who am I? How could I possibly help them? Despite other people might admire you, they might admire you. We go into self-doubt and we start to question whether we can actually do the do the work and help them. So me. Yeah. So Lily, great job. You've been doing the work. You I feel that confidence in you. I can deliver. Now, what was the last conversation that happened and who were you talking to? Was it the CEO or the head of human resources?

Yeah, it was the CFO. Who I have done one-on-one introductory conversations with. made a couple of proposals. She was in a transition space into this organization and wasn't able to take advantage of coaching at the time. But she's starting to see things within the leadership team that are not working for them and said, contact Lindley. We need to bring her on. And so my conversation with her was really powerful. And it was really how committed do you see your teammates?

in executing because this is not just a two day workshop and everybody's going to be warm and fuzzy. This is a long term tick the Titanic for course correction because there's there's some real deep challenges within the organization. I love the power and the confidence which you say that. How did that conversation go? Was it a chat about these things that ended with you saying that?

Yes, it was I reached out to her because she was the referral point. The original contact was through the executive assistants for the CEO. But I reached out to her and and first of all thanked her. And then I I asked her what outcomes she was hoping to get.

from the work. I asked her what her biggest challenges were, what she was seeing within the organization, what caused her to think, oh, we need to bring on a coach to to address some of our challenges. And so she wrote the story for me, essentially. Beautiful. Great, great questions. What happened at the end of that conversation?

Oh, you'll appreciate this. I said, you know, this is this is a really big project for you all. And I'm I'm testing the commitment. And there's not going to be a small price tag for this either. So I want to know how committed and she says, I don't think we can afford not to bring you on. Mm-hmm, nice. And then what happened? I said thank you and now I'm writing the the proposal. So she asked you to put something in writing. That's the next action point.

Let's backtrack a little bit so I can help you in future with some of these issues, and we'll look at this one. In future, One thing you could say to someone like like her is before I'll do any engagement with an organization, I always offer an executive preview. What I don't want you to do is if you decide this is a great project, that you have to then go and pitch this project to the CEO.

Unless now you happen to be talking to the CFO and sometimes the CFO can be able to write the check themselves. Is that the case on this occasion? Or you don't know. I think she can and she needs approval as well. So I think it's a yes and. Okay. So next time, executive, I want you to feel this in your bones. I want you to know the value of this experience. And here's how it'll work. I'll come and work with you. We'll have an hour-long call on Zoom. What I need from you is a commitment.

That in that hour, every other meeting is put off. Your phone is put away. You are fully there because I am fully there for you. I would normally charge a couple of thousand dollars. I rarely do one-off, one-on-one coaching sessions like this. The only time I'll do it.

was when I see someone who has a big mission and a big project where I could possibly help, I want them to know in their bones that it's right for us to work together. And if I'm gonna work with your leadership team, I've got to start by working with you. Thank you. I I actually think I can circle back to the executive assistant and ask for an hour from the CEO. his his intention and his commitment. The C E O. You can go straight to You have a relationship there?

Okay, that's great. Even better. Even better. Now the only thing I might do is a little depends how good your relationship is. It it initially it for for anyone who else who's listening later, maybe the first step would be Circle back to the CEO's assistant. Say, hey, I've got three, five important questions I want to ask the CEO. It will take 15 minutes only.

And then you use that as a gentle way in. I got, hey, these are my five questions. You know, simple questions. What's the big dream? Three years time. This this training has been amazing. What's the result you actually want? Well what what's what's your your biggest fear if it dis doesn't happen? Uh what's your biggest concern about the senior team right now? And possibly how coachable do you think your senior team?

Then after that, that might be enough if you've got a good relationship with that person. Then you could also say, look. Here's what I want to do. I want to give you an executive preview. And everything I just said about the CFO, offer that to the CEO. Let's do an executive preview. Because whilst I'm going to work with your team, you know, bottlenecks happen at the top of the bottom.

So I've got to work with you somehow on this work. We can't just delegate this. This big picture involves you somehow. Even if it's setting really clear guidelines about what they're going to do, we've got to draw that out of you. Let's do that. Let's take an hour to do that. And then you'll know. You see, if you do that, Lin Lee, you may not need a written proposal at all. Love that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The problem with a written proposal is time passes. We get nervous about writing it. It's been a few days now. Now we get a bit in our head. Now a few more days pass. Other things have happened. That that person who loved you at the moment, Steve Chandler used to call this the half-life of enthusiasts.

So it drops away really rapidly every day that goes past. So you've got to be able to write rapid proposals if you are going to do a proposal. But the mistake that most coaches make is that they think a proposal is something they should do after the court. No, a proposal is purely a written summary of what you have agreed in in that live conversation.

Big error to make it the other way because otherwise well we don't know. They just want to like, oh, she sounds interesting, but she said it's gonna be expensive. I don't know if I want to do this. Oh, could you give me a proposal?

And sometimes they just know it's not a fit. You know, we can be a great coach, but it's like dating, chemistry is not there. And they go, oh my God, I would never want to work with this person. I can't tell them that. So hey, I'd love to work with you. Send me a proposal. And then they can take their time responding and eventually they can say I'd love to work with you but the CEO said no. What we have to do is have the courage of saying, look, here's how I think it could work.

I'd like to have three possible ways. Look, here's option one, here's option two, here's option three. This is what it would look like. This is what they would cost. Does that sound interesting? Tell me more. Now, sometimes what I can do is get flexible too, just like a menu in a restaurant. You can add things, take things away. Which one is most interesting? What do you need that's missing? And we have that agreement on a call, then you can say.

Would you like me to summarise that in writing? And half the time you don't need to. If you serve them powerfully enough, they already they're in. Thank you. Yeah. It's great.

All right, I'll pause there for a second. Sarah, I saw you, there was this some kind of breath you took then as I was talking. What was happening to your body? The art of the proposal, as you were just covering those details, is an area of contraction that I have and experienced just this week. And and that order of operations in the brain, right? And realizing after the fact of, oh wait, that that was meant to happen live on that in that conversation or Is this proposal even needed?

Why am I even taking us in this direction? Because it doesn't feel good. I'm splitting the channels of communication. I'm losing momentum, the half-life. Okay. is happening and I'm trying to I work with individuals on deep healing journeys. Conscious, heart-centered leaders who have gotten to a place where they realize that everything that they want to build, create, and connect to is on the other side of deep inner work.

So they're really meeting themselves in a profound way and they know they want it, but all that fear is coming up. So there's a million places for the momentum to break down. And it must be self-directed, right? I can only do so much to help them move through it. Let me give you a couple of tools that might be valuable for you. The first one is that at some point you when they say to you, can you put that in writing?

You can say with a sense of confidence, oh no. No, no, that's not how this is not a corporate proposal where you're having competing bids. No, no, no. This what we've spent this last hour, me coaching you on, because you're using the prosperous coach approach, right? You're coaching them. Right. What the last hour I spent coaching you, what we drew out is what you need next is deep inner work. And that's going to be scary.

Every part of your system is going to say, this is not logical. I don't need this. This is not for me. It's not the right time. It's not the right moment. I'll do it later. I can't afford it. Your system is gonna scream. And that's okay. That's your system protecting you from what really needs to be done. Those deep fears, those insecurities, those big desires. That's okay. But it's got nothing to do with a written proposal. I don't do written proposals.

What I have found is after a conversation like this Two or three things happen. Either somebody knows I'm in, in which case you can take time to sleep on it. I always say it's a good idea. Even if you said I could wire you the money immediately, I wouldn't take it. I want to sleep on it too. If we both wake up tomorrow and decide it's a good fit, then we'll have a conversation and you're in. Or you're gonna take some time to sleep on it and realize it's not for And either of those are okay.

But it's got nothing to do with some kind of complex written proposal. That's not how this is going to work. How could it? Because the agenda is not on a document that I'm going to go out and create. The agenda is in you. Each fear that you bring up, each new desire that you uncover. That's what we're working on. It's gonna be intense, it's gonna be scary, it is not for everyone, and if it's not for you, that's okay.

The funny thing is that they're not asking for proposals, Rich. I'm thinking that they need them because the more I get into my confidence to charge what I'm worth. I think sometimes that that means that it needs a proposal. I have a 15 year background in big tech in corporate, right? So It's really the contraction around the value exchange.

So let me catch something really key about your wording. Now I'm finally going to charge what I'm worth. Let's have you never use that phrase again ever in your life. This is not what you're worth. What are you worth? You're not worth anything and you're worth everything.

You're not worth anything more than someone who's living in a homeless shelter right now or someone who's hungry in Sudan in the middle of a civil war. You just happen to be born where you were, you haven't had the schooling that you did. You're not worth anything more or less than anybody else on the planet. We told us there was a story about this, so we think about I'm going to finally charge what I'm worth. Nothing to do with what you're worth. You can charge what you want.

Now, will anyone pay it? It depends. Some people want to pay. Choice. They want a high end luxury car. Some people want a cheap Honda. Some people want to fly first class. Some people only want to fly economy. You get to choose what you want to charge. And some people are going to go, oh my God, I'm in. And others are going to go, that's not for me. Got nothing to do with your worth. Let's take that out of the equation.

And as soon as you set out the equation, it's just the number. So you've got to bring what I call birthday party energy. If I invite you to my kids' birthday party, I know you're gonna have a blast. If you've got kids, we've got a trampoline, we're gonna do something fun, we're we're gonna have punch for the adults, so you're gonna be able to take your mind off things. It's gonna be a blast. If you can come, great. If you can't, great. That's the energy.

So A, you've got to channel that energy, birthday party energy, and B, you're going to ch channel the energy which I modeled for you a moment ago, which I will call the energy of the movie The King's Speak. My castle, my rules, energy. Remember that scene? Yeah. She wants her husband to come and work with this amazing speech therapist. He he says, Well, you've got to come to my place to work. And she says, Well, no, my husband is the king, the king of England.

My castle, my rules. If you want to work with me, you knocked on my door. This is how we have to work together. That's the energy you have to channel. Birthday party energy, sense of lightness and fun. My castle, my rules. If you want to play, I'm here. This is how we play. Yeah. Yeah. May I share what's coming up? Ja, absolut. So tricky doing such deep therapeutic coaching because we know the resistance that come is coming up is exactly the thing that they've are asking for help with.

Especially when it's fear around finances and I can't afford it. And I've gone on my own journey as is necessary for the initiation of all coaches to invest in myself that way, experience that contraction in my own body. the leap of faith in my own body. And the art of managing that opportunity to coach. the client into where they want to to go. Without overextending, right? Without going into the neediness or trying to push what I can see that they can't.

when I know that it's really like fear and parts work, right? It's like their deepest inner work. And I have these intuitive hits of like, include this part of the conversation earlier. integrate it rather than treat it, treat it as a separate, oh no, or hill I'm gonna have to climb. Yeah, you can you do that. There's a tool in NLP called inoculation. So you could let them know, hey, at at some point after our conversation is over, there's gonna be a sense of

Either excitement and a deep knowing that you're in, or a sense of fear and doubt that's coupled with desire. You really want it, but you're not sure. And what our mind will do is rational. So you will come up with reasons and the two easiest ones for your mind to rationalize are, I don't have the time, I'll do it later. I don't have the money, I'll do it when I can afford it.

It's okay, but when those thoughts come up, just notice, oh, that's my brain protecting myself. That's my little girl inside trying to keep me safe. It doesn't mean you have to go against that. It doesn't mean you have to listen to it or not listen to it. Just notice what it is, because the moment you catch that, it's freedom for you. Thank you.

Yeah. Beautiful, right? You wrap that into the process and you can tell them, you know, halfway through, don't wait till the end of the call even. And it's and and what the best way to do this is to model, there's not even a word for it in the English language, needlessness.

We don't have a word for it. We have needy. There's no word for the opposite of needy, but model. Look, you need more than I need you. You knocked on my door, I didn't knock on yours. And you don't have to say those words, but you can be those words. Hey, look, if those voices in your head come up and you decide now's not the time, that's okay.

you will be fine. You'll have a great life. But if at some point your system says, you know what, that desire is stronger than the doubt and fear, I'm here for you. Give me a call. For those of you who are listening, uh Sarah just took a big breath and then a sigh. I felt it. Yeah. Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi và hẹn gặp lại. Lily, what did you get from hearing that conversation for you? How was any of that relevant for what your work? Yeah, I uh what came up for me was Mm.

what I coach around, duh, like, right? We coach that which we need the most. I is having these types of dialogue. and inviting the conversation up front. The stuff that scares us, the stuff that we're reticent to put out in the universe or i in dialogue. we can approach it it's like eating the frog first right which is the saying do the hard stuff first

You can put that on the table and say, you know, this is all part of human nature. It's been this way for a long time. And we've learned how to protect ourselves if you're ready to lean into an edge and make a shift and really lean into the energy of growing forward. Consider this. Yeah. That's great. I I think one of the things that helps us the most with that certainly helped me, my first ever coach.

was a fifty thousand dollar investment back in two thousand and seven and I did an apprenticeship. And as long as I look back, I think the biggest thing I got from that is when from that moment on, when anybody said it's expensive to work with me, I would smile, yeah, maybe. And I started to search out people like me who invested a lot in themselves. And you know, y you guys have done that in all sorts of ways, even being willing to

be on a call like this and be willing to share in a public setting, being willing to jump on a plane and come to Santa Fe, do the work with us, learning the work we've done in the past. So you're modeling this and you can talk about that with them. Talk about the ways that you invest in yourself. financially, with time, with energy, commitment.

So they get it. Look, thank you both. We scratched the surface of this. We're gonna go much deeper at the intensive. Thank you for trusting me. Sarah, what's your single biggest takeaway from this conversation? slow down and trust my intuition because I already know what to do. I feel that Slow down and trust my intuition'cause I already know what You're right on. And fifteen minutes on a CEO's agenda. Thanks for trusting me both of you. I'll see you soon. Thank you. It wasn't called