Motivating Your Client

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 160. 

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic under earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. And then, on to multiple six figures as a fulltime money and business coach. 

I help entrepreneurs create money making businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to speak with you today. 

We are just about to light our first Hanukkah candle. It is such a beautiful time of year. My parents are in town visiting, which is so lovely. It's been two years since my dad and stepmom came to visit. It is a beautiful time for our family because we have welcomed two new grandchildren recently into our family, and we have another one due in just another week or so.

My parents are here to celebrate with all of us. We are, of course, celebrating the miracles of Hanukkah; the miracle of the oil from the holy temple in Jerusalem that was supposed to last for only one day. The miracle was that the oil lasted for eight days. And also the miracle of our army; when the few soldiers, the few warriors, the Maccabees were able to overcome and vanquish the entire Greek or Hellenist army. 

It's again, as I said last week on the podcast, it's very prescient because that is exactly what we are witnessing and experiencing today. As we say in our prayers, In Hallel, Bayom hahu, b'zman hazeh; those days and also in these days. So we're really, really grateful for this holiday, and always reminding ourselves that G-d is really taking care of us. He's really on our side.

Before we jump into the podcast, I do want to remind you that as we go into Hanukkah, I am having some special offers in my business. If you are not yet on my newsletter, you really do want to go. Because you want to be the first to know. Stop this podcast episode right now, go to my newsletter, DebbieSassen.com/newsletter, and let's get you signed up. Because you don't want to miss any of the exciting announcements that are coming to you this season. 

All right, my friends, let us talk about today's topic, which is motivation. And I don't mean your motivation. We can talk about your motivation a different time; whether you're getting up in the morning excited about your business. 

If you're not working with clients who motivate you and excite you, you're not doing the high-caliber work that you want to be doing, then we might be able to talk about motivation. I want you to go back to last week's podcast when we talked about boundaries. Because if you're not keeping your boundaries in your business, you can definitely feel like you're over giving, you're undercharging, or you're being treated like a doormat — kind of like we talked about last week.

And it is, I can imagine, hard to get up every morning and show up for work when you're not getting paid the amount of money that you feel represents the energetic exchange for what you're giving to your clients. You want to get paid so that you can continue filling yourself up, so that you can feel resourced, so that you can be rested, so your brain is on fire, so your creativity is really going without bounds. 

And for that to happen, you need to be resourced, you need to be rested, and you have to keep your boundaries. So if you missed last week's episode, go back to Episode 159.

Today, we're talking about motivation for your client. Is it your job to keep your client motivated? This came up recently in some of my client discussions, where my clients felt that they had to work extra hard, where they had to put a lot of effort into keeping their clients motivated; to show up, to do the work, to stay on course.

And this is a little bit related to the boundary issue that we spoke about last week. You don't want to have to be pulling your clients along, yanking them, making them do the work; whatever kind of work you're doing. I mean, imagine if you're an accountant, you need your clients to continue to give you documents. You need them to sign on time. You need them to pay taxes on time if they need to, or do their filings on time. That's also motivation.

But I'm specifically speaking to those of you who might be more in the coaching or healing professions or some other profession that's similar, where you feel like in order for your client to make progress, you have to be a cheerleader. You have to keep inspiring them or keep them going. 

And I want to suggest to you, very strongly, I want to suggest that that is not your job. Your job is to help your clients see where they have blind spots or where they're not seeing things correctly. Your job is to hold belief for your clients that they can get the results that they want. 

When you're working with your clients, it is important that you set out at the beginning of your relationship — this is part of the agreement and the boundaries we spoke about last week — how are they going to measure the success of this relationship? Is it going to be a money goal? Is it going to be a weight loss goal? Is it going to be a fitness goal? 

If you're a copywriter, the success is going to be based on how many people they can convert with their emails. Or how many people come to their websites and actually click one of the buttons on their website because the copy is so compelling. 

So you have to make sure that both you and your client are clear on how they're going to measure the success.

But if you are, for example, a weight loss coach, and you have to constantly remind your clients to come to the meetings, to come to your appointments, to make sure that they're eating right, you're not treating your client as an adult. We have to allow our clients to make their own decisions. And then when they come to your sessions, you can be like, “Hey, what's going on?”

Or if you're a business coach like I am, and your clients aren't doing the work, they're not doing courageous things, they're not doing brave things, they're not moving outside their comfort zone... The more your clients move outside their comfort zone, the more they do new things, the more they can grow. 

So your job is to hold the space for them and the belief for them that they can reach their amazing goals. I really do believe my clients can double their income, triple their income, quadruple their income. It depends on where they're starting, how much time they have to put into it, how much courage they have to put into their business, how much they're willing to fail, and I'll be there for them.

I will show them where their mind is tricking them and telling them lies, and serving up thought errors to my clients. Of course, I'm still not going to do the work for my clients. They have to do the work. And if they're not doing it, because it feels uncomfortable or they don't want to make mistakes or they don't want to fail, that is theirs. I can be like, “You've got it. I know you can.” 

I can give a little bit of cheerleading, but my job isn't to follow up every single day, every week with, “You got this. Keep going. Keep going.” That's the job of a cheerleader. That is not the job of a coach. That's not the job of a healer. That's not the job of many of my clients in the work that they do. 

So it is a little bit connected with boundaries. Keep your boundaries. What is yours? What is theirs? Your job is to hold the belief. Your job is to see where they have some blind spots. Your job is to point out where they're thinking incorrectly. Your job is to really believe that there is a bigger future for your clients, that they can see right now, when they're willing to do the hard work. 

My friends, when you want to grow your business, I hold out the belief that when you invest in your business, when you're willing to even borrow money if you don't have it, we can definitely use that as leverage to grow your business.

Now, am I going to sit here and motivate you and say, “Yes, you can,” and take you down to the bank to get a bank loan? Absolutely not. But I will hold the belief for you that when you decide to invest in your business, when you decide to go full-out, play full-out, and leverage your income, leverage money in your business to grow, that there is tremendous amount of potential out there and tremendous amount of growth available to you.

I've seen it happen over and over again. That when you go playing full-out and you burn the boat so you're not turning back, and you really believe that this is the future direction of your business, you will get what you came for. But I'm not going to motivate you. I'll hold space for you. I will show up for you. And the work, my friend, is yours to do. 

All right, so that's my little mini-podcast episode for this week on motivation. Be there for your clients. Believe in your clients. Believe that your clients can get the results that they want, and your clients are going to do the work. 

I will see you next week on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Bye-bye for now.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth. 

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.