Can I get inside your head for a minute?  Just for a little bit…I won’t stay too long, I promise.

Because what I want to do inside that pretty little head of yours is to go into your brain and help you STOP making those comparisons!

You know the ones.  Where you look at your stuff and notice how EVERYONE ELSE is doing it better.  Or where you sit back and feel like you can’t possibly be where Ali Brown or the other superstars are.

After working with loads and loads and loads of businesses over the last 5 years, I can tell you that there are distinct stages of business growth, and usually the nasty comparisons start when we are in one stage looking at someone in another stage, so of course we fall short.

It’s like the toddler who beats herself up for not being able to drive.  Do you think she stops trying to walk/run because everyone else around her has car keys?  No, toddlers are focused on mastering their developmental task, so that’s my hope for you over these next three blog posts.  You will learn where you are, come to acceptance of that stage, and understand what you need to get mastery in before you can move on.

Stage One – Service Mastery

I guess I should preface this with the fact that I’m talking about service providers.  If you have a vending machine company, this probably isn’t gonna inspire you like it will if you are a coach, speaker, consultant, therapist, doctor, CPA, etc.

In this stage you want to learn how to get really good at what your service is.  This is where you are first opening the doors of your biz – aka entreprenurial freedom – and you are mastering your craft.  When I first started coaching I was lucky enough to be able to be involved with Thomas Leonard, who many consider the Father of Coaching.  He used to say, “After you coach the first 100, it all makes sense.”  His idea back then was to give away as much coaching as possible, just to gain experience and to work toward feeling masterful.

I remember feeling very unsure of myself because I was new in the field.  And truthfully, I was driving myself nuts!  Nuts because I couldn’t charge what I was worth, and didn’t have the confidence I did as a psychotherapist which was the career I had just come from.  So I did the work of analyzing what it would take for me to feel just as masterful doing coaching as I did being in the therapy world.  Would it take more clients, more income, or more time doing it?  While those answers may work for some, for me it turned out that what was necessary was the feeling of mastery.  Because I could set the benchmark for myself, I could also notice then when I had passed it!

Mastery for me came when I learned how to perfect my coaching and then also how to enroll clients.  What would it be for you in your business if you are in the start up stage?

Now if you are at this stage, you may be thinking, “GIVE IT AWAY?” I know, that sounds crazy.  So maybe don’t give all of it away, but give enough away or discount  your prices a bit to get people who will validate your work and give you testimonials.

There is nothing sweeter than the confidence that comes when a client shares with you the changes/success they have had as a result of their work with you.  When I got my first “OMG I can’t believe this happened” testimonial all those years ago, it felt like a thing I could put in my pocket and pull out whenever I was talking to a new and prospective client.  It boosted my confidence ten fold when that client told me that she was five years ahead of any other business that would have started on the same day because I accelerated her results and blasted past the learning curve of starting a business.  (And you want to know the funniest thing????  I had no idea I was doing that- that’s why you need to be asking for the results you are getting from your clients.)

Let’s summarize – in this stage it’s all about becoming the best _________ you can be.  You need to discover places where you can improve and find ways to beef them up.  And while I usually preach to keep your rates high, at this stage I will tell you to assign a portion of your time to no or low cost work, in exchange for a testimonial or feedback.  And for goodness sake, don’t compare yourself with folks who have been marketing for years.  It doesn’t serve you at all.

What’s next?  After you get really really good at what you do, there comes a moment where you say, “Oh crap!  I’m doing all of this myself and have no time.”  That overwhelm is usually sign you are on your way to Stage Two which is business mastery…but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to read about that!