Hey, it's Samantha here. I am so happy you're listening. I just wrapped up season 18 of the show. 18 seasons. that's 216 audio and video episodes on topics ranging from finding perfect clients, selling a hundred thousand dollars plus engagements, discovering your consulting brand identity, packaging, and pricing your services, delivering those services efficiently, selling them with integrity, cultivating a mindset for success…

In today's episode, I wanted to highlight some of the key messages of season 18 in case you missed them. I've selected five excerpts here for you. All of these episodes are listed in the show notes with links, so if you missed one and you want to go back and hear it or hear it again, just tap the link in the show notes.

INTRO

Season 18 was inspired by real questions from my listeners, and we started out by answering whether my clients are really earning a hundred thousand dollars per engagement. As I shared in the episode, that's about the average, what my clients are earning. And specifically in this excerpt, you are going to hear me talk about the mindset shift required for you to do that too.  

The last thing I hear around this is I wouldn't pay that much. Well, that's where you really need to work on your mindset because what you see in your business is a mirror of your internal state. And when you have that kind of scarcity, you're going to see that mirror back to you from your clients. So if you're like, I wouldn't pay that much, you're going to be surrounded by clients who are like, we're not paying that much money. What are you going to do? What are you even doing? How much time are you going to spend on it? Do you hear those questions? I never get those questions because I don't carry that energy within me. I don't carry those questions in me. If somebody comes and they can solve your problem in five minutes and it's a hundred thousand dollars, if you have a million dollar level problem, you want it solved quickly. You don't care how long it took, and you're happy to pay that. So you want to find perfect clients who are clear about how big a problem this is for them, meaning what it's costing them, and what the value would be when that problem was gone. And then you want to be able to charge them commensurate with the value you're giving them.

That means if you're solving a million dollar problem, they're happy to pay a hundred thousand, 200,000, 300,000 to you for that, even 500,000. Would they pay $500,000 to solve a million dollar problem? Maybe, maybe not, but just think about it; if I gave you a hundred dollars, would you give me a 50? Would you give me $20? Would you give me $10? That's the kind of ROI that we're looking at when we're working with these organizations. Well, I wouldn't pay that. Okay. For what would you pay $10,000? If I have a hundred thousand dollar leak in my house or problem in my business, and I could pay $10,000 to fix that, I would pay that all day long. And wouldn't you? So if you really start to get your mindset right around the kind of question that you're asking for what would I pay that kind of money, then you're getting closer to the thing you are asking your clients to invest in.

That question is such a powerful turnaround. I really hope you use it and that it works for you too. Up next, I had the most fun working on this one. I love, love, love this topic. I am a weirdo who loves talking about sales objections. It's so insanely fun and it's another turnaround, a shift, in your thinking that'll help you to be more curious and more prepared in your sales calls.

So in researching this episode, I was lucky enough to have some in-person time with my brother. He and I live in different states, but I am visiting home. I got a chance to talk with him. And he's also in sales, not surprisingly, but I had a chance to explore the topic of objections with him. And he, like me, was first of all very lit up by this. Oh, this is like a super exciting topic. Every time I would surface an objection, he would say, well, that's a buying signal. And this is the blanket takeaway, good news that I want you to hear is that when you hear these things in a sales conversation, it's a buying signal.

It means somebody is working on processing how do I get from where I am now to enrolling with you to purchasing your program, your services? It's a buying signal. Isn't that amazing? We think of objections as (screech) slow down, stop, let's not do this, I'm out signal. Objections mean I don't want it, but it's actually the opposite. Very often, if you're in sales conversations with someone, they're in the process of figuring out how do I work with you? How do I solve my problem? I have said before, when someone gets on a sales call with you, they hope, wish, and pray you are the last person they need to talk to about this. They really want to close this loop. No one wants to be in the hiring a consultant process. No one wants to be figuring out how do we solve our expensive problem here? Can you just be the one who can do this for us, they think when they get on a call, I sure hope this is the one. I don't want to have another 35 years of searching for the right person.

So we hope you're the end of the line. So when you're hearing objections, “objections,” these are ways for a person to figure out, they're letting you know, here's what I need to overcome in order to make this work for me. So they are actually good news if you think of them as buying signals. If I put myself in their shoes, they're thinking I can't afford it. My thought is that they might be saying, dag, I wish it was cheaper. Ah, I didn't want it to be that much. Oh, wow. That's a lot of money. I'm surprised. All of those things that they're thinking, none of those is, no, I'm not doing this. If they're thinking, no, I'm not doing this, they usually hang up. Leaves the meeting. Say Thank you for your time, or something like that. Those things are closing.

Those are not buying signals. Those are ending a meeting and going away. A buying signal is, I say something like, I can't afford it. Wow, that's expensive. But then I remain here sitting with you, waiting for something to happen. That part of the waiting is the buying signal. Your assignment from here, think about what those are for your potential clients.

Okay, I may never get you to love sales as much as I do, but at least I can help you feel more comfortable with it. Next up, this was the most popular episode of the season on YouTube where we host the video version of the podcast. I never know what's going to capture your attention but it seems like the 4:00 AM freakouts really resonated. In this segment, I'm talking about the first step to getting control over the voice of doom and gloom that starts in on you when you're trying to get some sleep

So here's what you need to do to manage your 4:00 AM freakouts. First thing is. We have to have brain boundaries.We have to set up mental boundaries. And what if you don't have them? It seems impossible that this is the thing that you can do, but just as you can tell someone, don't touch that, don't touch me, pay me on time, I'm sorry, no calls after 5:00 PM, Those same boundaries that you can set outside yourself, you can set inside yourself with your mind. That voice in your head can be contained. I know it's crazy. The first time I did it, I was amazed. But I was beside myself with the 4:00 AM freakouts and I would be besieged at nighttime when I was sleeping, and also when I was napping. And I was napping 'cause I slept so poorly that I needed to nap during the day and I would be napping. And I would be like, I'm trying to sleep. So eventually I just said, here's a rule. No thinking about money when I'm horizontal; daytime, nighttime, resting, watching TV with the dogs, doesn't matter. When I'm horizontal, there's no thinking about money, and I just made it go away. I just set that boundary.

So you can decide, if you're worried about a client thing and it's noon on Saturday and you want to be out with the kids having a good time, and that voice is in your head, you can say not ‘til Monday. I'm not going to think about this until Monday at 8:00 AM and then just work on it. You can control this. You're going to control when that voice comes in.

So the first thing I want you to know is you can have boundaries with that scary voice in your head, and you can shut it down, contain it, and you can contain it to where, first of all, it only comes in at certain times, and then you can contain it to where no, no, no, only between these hours. And then you can contain it to where it is so small that you almost can't hear it at all. That is what's possible for you.

It's so, so possible. One thing that makes me feel like I didn't suffer in vain, whenever I've learned things the hard way, is being able to share what has worked for me and corralling that 4:00 AM freak-out voice in my head has been one of the most liberating things I have done since I've been in business.

In the next highlight I've pulled through for you, just one tip from the epic episode I did on websites. I had not covered that topic at all in 200 and something episodes, so I had a lot to say about it. If you missed it, you'll definitely want to go back and hear the whole episode. But if you take nothing else away from today, these notes on your homepage are where you want to start.

And finally we come to the homepage. The very first website I did, it took me seven hours to write the homepage for the website because it might seem like it's the first page and then you do all of the other pages after that. No, it's actually the opposite. You write your entire website and then you summarize it on the homepage. You select out of everything that you're telling on the entire website, you're selecting what is the content that I'm going to share with that potential client on the homepage. So it's where you want to be the most intentional. And you want to think of it as the first impression, but you might want to work on it last because you'll have explored everything else that you're going to have on the website, and then decide what do I want them to see when they first come here.

The number one job of a homepage of a website is to answer this question. When your visitor gets to your homepage, you want them to say, am I in the right place? And your homepage needs to tell them yes. Now, if they're the wrong person, it should tell them, no, get lost, nothing to see here. Get away. Bye. Okay? And so when, if you have a bounce rate, which means people who come to your website and then bounce away almost immediately, that's fine. It's fine if not your person bounces away. But I want your perfect clients when they come to your homepage to say, oh, I'm in the right place. I found the right place.

They found the right place. That is how you get clients through your website. And last but not least, this is the most important three minutes of the season and possibly of the show. Over the years, I've helped my clients to get some pretty amazing results in their businesses: crossing the million dollar mark, adding hundreds of thousands in revenue, firing shitty clients, attaining financial freedom, and living their dream lives. And sometimes I've had to fight them to let me help them do it. This is what I learned from those experiences. It's from the last episode of the season and it's called Hard Truths. I could not have delivered this message to you when I started. It wasn't until I had worked with so many women that I realized it wasn't a unique challenge to just a few of them. It wasn't anomalous. It's true for all of us. I share it here again with love.

I promised you hard truths, and this is a really hard one. It's really hard. It's hard even for me to say this to you. You'll earn as much as you believe you deserve. Not as much as you deserve because you deserve to earn millions, billions. You deserve to earn whatever you want. You deserve the world, but you'll only earn as much as you believe you deserve. So how do you know how much you believe you deserve? You answer this question, how much are you earning right now? How much are you earning? How much could you be earning? That is the answer to how much you believe you deserve.

I had a client, let's call her Genevieve. I love that beautiful name and my client is beautiful and wonderful and smart and she, through our work, landed a big, big engagement. Very soon after that, started experiencing in her life a lot of money mistakes and money problems. Someone took some money from her and a couple other clients canceled their contracts, and she lost some money on a real estate deal – just weird stuff happening with money. And she came to me and said, what the hell is happening? So we worked through this, a lot of dialoguing about it, and finally I said to her, listen, you're powerful. You are a powerful person. You got this client. You made this stuff happen around you. Why did you cause all of this money to go away from you? Why did you cause this to happen? So she spun it in her mind from it was happening to her, and she thought about it, like, why am I doing this to myself? Why would I do this to myself? And then she heard the answer and she said, because I didn't believe that I deserve the money from the big client.

When we don't believe we deserve the money we have, we send it away from ourselves. When you believe you deserve to earn what your goal revenues are, you will have more money than you ever imagined possible. You'll have tens of thousands in your bank account month after month after month. Years ago, I had an affirmation on the page where I track my revenues and I said I always earn exactly as much as I need. And then I did for years, and then I realized I always have as much as I need, but I don't ever have more than that. So then I changed the affirmation that was on that sheet, and I said I always have more than I need. I always have so much more than I need. And then my experience right now in my business is that every time I check my business bank account, there's always more and more and more and more and more and more 'cause that's what I affirm and that's what I believe I deserve. Would I like to be earning more and am I always working on raising my money thermostat? Yes, of course. And this is the thing I'm working with my clients on constantly. We are pushing the envelope for ourselves, we're expanding our capacity to receive and expanding what we believe to be possible for ourselves.

So much is possible for you. You can follow these quick nuggets back to the complete episodes by clicking the links in the show notes. I mentioned earlier the range of topics we cover on the show: perfect clients, transformational engagements, selling with integrity, those are taken from my signature approach, which is called 10 Drivers of Consulting Business Success on the Path to 2 Million. Yes, it is a super long name, I know. I have a document where you can read all about that and also take a self-assessment to see how you're doing with the 10 drivers. It's at samanthahartley.com/super. And on that page, you just look for the self-assessment. And while you're there, be sure to connect with me on social media. And please, please, please subscribe on your favorite audio podcast app. I'm thrilled to keep bringing you practical, inspiring, and informative episodes to help you build a profitable and joyful consulting business.