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Baby, It’s You.

Chapter 11 of Make ‘Em Beg To Be Your Client!

Back in the 90s, I once worked on a book about lottery winners, and proceeded to interview 80 lottery winners. In the process, I learned 79 of the 80 not only lost all the money they won in the lottery, but they lost even more than that. The only person I talked to who hadn’t lost all their money was somebody who already had a lot of family money. They had a wealth manager in place. They had already spent a lot of time on money mindset. And they were ready for more money, so they were able to take that money and grow it. By the time I interviewed them for that book, it had been about 10 years since their lottery winnings. They basically had multiplied 10x what they won in the lottery through investment, while almost everyone else lost it. Those 79 of 80 not only lost more money than they had won, but they also had lost lawsuits, homes, businesses, and even lost family members.

Why? Because they hadn’t built up the emotional muscle to be the person who had that money.

This is what I want you to know about getting people begging to be your client. It isn’t about the tactics, though there are many in this book you can apply to your business (and I hope you do!). Know this: The tactics alone won’t work. The tactics will backfire if you don’t also become the person who has the result before you get it.

Here’s the secret: Everything your brain wants to do, remember to keep you alive, is to avoid becoming that person. Avoiding discomfort and change. Shedding the skin that served you in a painful process that includes feeling a lot of difficult feelings. Those feelings will make you more uncomfortable. And look, you don’t have to do the difficult emotional work, or process how you’re sabotaging your growth, and start choosing the thoughts and behaviors of the next level of success. You could just stay right where you are. Remember, the brain thinks it won if you simply woke up the next morning. Whatever you did yesterday, you are programming your brain for, “Oh, do that again. We woke up. We’re alive.”

If last week you went out there, and launched an imperfect webinar in some fashion – say you got some people to sign up, or you didn’t, or not as many as you wanted, or your technology broke, or you had some weird Internet troll calling you names, whatever came up that felt like risk – and it left you feeling uncomfortable, that’s because your brain was busy trying to stop that shit from coming up. Your brain was saying, “We might die. What if that Internet troll comes and kills us in the night?”

It’s also true when you simply did it anyway, and then went to sleep and woke up in the morning, that is reprogramming your brain to be the person who has the outcome you want. Whatever happened, as long as you did it, you won. Give yourself a pat on the back!

One of the tools I share with my clients is to always have a list of rewards that you will give yourself for doing the hard stuff. It can be as simple as watching an episode of some trashy reality TV show midday or buying a nice pen.

It’s not that I care if you get a reward, it’s that habit programs your brain and it says, “We lived. We can do hard things. Even better, we got something we wanted out of it.” Find ways to reward your brain. That’s really the goal here. That’s why the key that determines your success isn’t the tactics, but your ability to manage the drama around action, and keep moving forward. The way you tell yourself we did that is, “Now, have the Netflix binge.” We don’t Netflix binge to avoid feeling our feelings. We Netflix binge to reward ourselves for feeling our feelings, and surviving, and taking the steps to change.

I want you to continually reward yourself for taking action, because it reprograms your brain to say, “This is safe. We’re not going to die. We can do hard things. We can put ourselves out there and fuck shit up, and nobody dies, and this is actually fun, and we get rewards.”

When you listen back to one of your sales calls, I want you to reward yourself with a nap or a mid- day meditation, or something you find totally delicious. I love smoothies, but I really hate the process of having to go to the store, buy the ingredients, blend it, clean the blender. Give yourself an hour and a half, after you’ve listened to a sales call, to make a killer smoothie and clean up after it, and then just enjoy it. You have nowhere else to be. You will think that it’s about the smoothie, and it’s not about the smoothie at all, it is about integrating and reflecting on what you’ve learned and listened to. That’s actually work, you can count it as work time. It will lead to clients. It will lead to revenue. It will lead to funding your movement. It will lead to people begging to be your client.

An author who has people begging to work with her is spending considerable time getting the word out about her work (we call this awareness); she is frequently offering free content in exchange for contact information (we call these lead magnets); and she is offering to serve those people she can truly help, and with love. Getting to sustainable momentum from zero takes considerable and consistent focus and effort on a few specific activities to attract a few people – just one or two a week – to step through your wee portal.

You have to have the right strategy, and then you have to actually take action on the tactics and optimize them. While in action, you have to manage all the drama that’s going to come up. We’re not trying to reach a point where your drama never comes up, we’re trying to reach a point where this level of drama is so boring that you’re ready to move on to the next level of drama. When you look at the amount of drama that the people who have really powerful movements can handle, it’s a whole lot more than you can. Turn your focus onto doing the tactics while knowing I’m not going to feel awesome all the time, but through this discomfort and growth you get to actually build that muscle up and create your movement.

Earlier in the book I asked, “What do you want the reason to be for growing your business?” Money alone won’t keep you motivated. For me, the answer is simple: I believe entrepreneurship is the single best way to reach your highest human potential. When you are the best in the world at solving a specific problem, and you know it, you don’t have to convince someone to buy from you, you can just love them – and trust they will know what to do.

One of our talent scouts said it best. He said, “I think the real testament to a L.O.VE.ing ‘sales’ process is when the clients who don’t buy from you thank you profusely for the process. They feel they have been seen, heard and cared for, they thank you, and may look forward to an opportunity to buy from you in the future.”

That’s what I want for each of you, to have clients begging you to take their money and knowing they would do it again, 100 times, to have the experience they had with you. You have the strategy, you have the tactics. Now go manage the drama – and make the world a better place.

Acknowledgments

First, I have to thank the woman who inspired this book’s creation with her simple, celebratory post about finishing her own book. The Myrna from the first chapter is Myrna Buckles, the author of Wigs, Scarves and Lies. While she lives on the other side of the country, it felt as though she was next to me with every chapter I wrote. Thanks for being so brave and vulnerable, for sharing so generously, and for always being willing to step up and help. You inspire me! And I hope the book I wrote for you will inspire many others as well. Thanks for asking such great questions.

I feel like all my clients are my soulmates, but some soulmate clients happen to live nearby and share a lot of the same interests as I do (like shoes and spas and crystals.) Thank you Nurys for making it so easy and fun to write. Having you next door made it impossible to quit. I love having such a badass recruiting industry rock star as a client, and I’m even more grateful to also be able to call you a friend.

While I was away writing this book, my husband Paul was home, sick, and holding down the fort, er… um… castle. Thanks for being there, so I could be 100% here. I am never quite sure what I’d do without you.

My favorite human turned 12 while I was writing this book. Thank you, Jesse, for holding off your birthday celebrations until I finished. You make me proud every day. Thanks for being my greatest teacher and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I love you!

Love beams of gratitude to Mila, Sofia, Lauti and the rest of my family – and to the entire team at The Author Incubator; especially Heather “Big Love” Russell, our head Talent Scout and the torch bearer for our LOVE Method of Sales, and Cal Misener, who gave me the ending for the book at the exact moment I needed it.

If it weren’t for Dr. Diva Nagula and the entire staff at www.TheIVDoc.com pumping me full of vitamins so I would be healthy enough to write, this book could not exist. If you have never tried IV hydration therapy and you find yourself run down from jet lag and a cold just before you have committed to write a book, I highly recommend looking into it. I’ve never felt better or had more energy!

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the incredible hospitality of The Salamander Resort & Spa, where this book was written.

Thanks for Reading

When I talk to traditional publishers and agents about The Author Incubator, they are gobsmacked by the incredibly high percentage of our authors who have generated $250,000 or more from their books. These numbers are easily ten times what they would expect new, non- fiction authors to attain.

I created a companion class for this book, which can be found over at www.QuarterMillionBook.com. If you want to understand more about how to use your book to get clients who are begging you to work with them, check out the training and let me know what you think on your favorite social media site.

Facebook – www.facebook.com/TheAuthorIncubator
Twitter – www.twitter.com/authorincubator
Instagram – www.instagram.com/authorincubator
Linked In – www.linkedin.com/company/1589902/

Get the rest of the chapters of Make ‘Em Beg To Be Your Client! here

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Explore Sophia’s fascinating journey from
couch surfing to 2 bestselling books

By opting in, you’re joining our vibrant community! Expect 2-3 weekly newsletters packed with curated content, exclusive updates, and valuable insights to fuel your journey. Welcome to the conversation!

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