Ask Me Anything episode! Outreach, confidence and visibility!

Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm Ellie Scarfe, a executive coach, senior executive coach, and now mentor and coach to other executive and leadership coaches. Now, today's episode is one I like to do periodically, and it's always good fun. So today I'm going to answer questions that have been submitted over the last little While, generally on LinkedIn or by email. So if you have any questions, please, please feel free to send those through and you can drop Those into my LinkedIn inbox. You can email them to me at. Whatever works best for you. I will keep them anonymous so you don't have to worry whatever you send through. But these are a great set of questions that I think will be interesting to everyone. So the first question that is asked of me frequently, not just from this particular request, but is a common question, is how do I start doing outreach when I feel really awkward about it, right? When I feel like sending those messages is just excruciating. And the first thing I want to say is, we, I get it, right? We all have that moment where we're about to send these messages. We know we need to, we know we need to tap into our networks, our warm networks especially. But the idea of sending that message to someone you worked with 10 or 15 years ago just feels insurmountably uncomfortable, right? So I'm going to give you a couple of different approaches. I'm going to talk about some really practical things you can do to get over that hump of awkwardness. Because, and I'm hoping this goes without saying, outreach is the thing that is going to join the dots between your network, your credibility, and all of the incredible skills and talents that you have. It's going to join the dots between those things and getting actual work, right? It's the thing that, that, that makes it possible and makes it happen. So it's not optional. So I'm going to talk about the practical stuff and then I'm going to talk about some more of the mindset pieces that are often at play around this. So from a practical perspective, here's some tips. If you're feeling really awkward about doing your outreach, you are procrastinating, you are overthinking. The first thing I wanted you to do is give yourself some targets number. Now, if you have some targets, you are much more likely to achieve them. What that target looks like is really dependent on your goals. Now, inside my program, the accelerator, what we do is we work backwards from a revenue goal and we reverse engineer that all the way down to how many outreach messages do I need to send on a weekly basis, monthly basis, weekly basis? All of the above. Now, you can do that for yourself or you can say, if you were to say, I'm going to send 20 outreach messages a week, 20 to 30, you're going to be in the ballpark, right? So that's going to be about right. So set yourself some targets. Now, I don't mind if you don't go, oh, I'm going to do 30 every week to start with. If you say five to start with, that's okay. But just have a target. Alongside having the target, I think we also need to put in place some accountability measures. And that means if you are anything like me, you can set targets till the cows come home. Right? You might be really good at setting goals, but you might not be so good at holding yourself accountable to those targets, particularly when there is no external commitment. Right? Because I work really well with external accountability. So you need to figure out if that's you. Now, you might be a person who you know in Gretchen Rubin's Afford tendencies model. You should look that up. If you've never heard of it, you might be an upholder. And an upholder will respond well to commitments that they make to themselves. They would treat it the same as commitments they've made to other people. So you probably don't need accounting accountability in the same way. But if you are an obliger, and I put myself firmly in that category, you are much better at responding to demands and, and commitments to other people than you are demands and commitments to yourself. So external accountability is really powerful. Now inside the accelerator, we do that through our weekly accountability commitments in our community. Everyone posts at the start of the week, what is it that they're working on, their top three priorities, including at least one that's related to business development. And then at the end of the week, we follow up and we check in and we see how they went on those things. And often people will reflect on what didn't, didn't work and what they're going to do differently next week. Having some accountability helps. Knowing that someone is keeping an eye on how you go with these commitments that you've made is much more likely to help you to actually get going and to do those outreach messages. The third way you can start outreach when you feel awkward from a practical perspective is to have some templates. Now, I don't mean send the same exact message to a thousand people in your LinkedIn network. No, what I mean is have a few templates that work for the people in your audience that you can then customize for the individuals that you're reaching out to. Now, that could be that you have one that works for old colleagues from a particular industry, or you might have one that is for people who are in certain roles that you worked with. You might have one that's more for people in your personal network, and then you can go from there. Now, of course, the content of your outreach is really important and I will put in the show notes a link to outreach templates that I've got for you to, to copy, if you like. In fact, can I remember the link? I think it is elliscarf.com outreach if that doesn't work, please send me a message on LinkedIn and I'll make sure you get hold of that resource. So templates are your friend because updating and adapting and personalizing a template is a whole lot easier than starting from scratch. The next thing you need to be sure is that you treat it as an experiment and you give it a long enough period of time so that you can really assess the results. Because what people often do is they get really excited. They send five outreach messages and then they get nothing back and they go, oh, it doesn't work. Or it felt awkward and it didn't work. So therefore, that awkwardness, that discomfort that I felt was correct. And this is not something I should do because it's, it doesn't work. And the truth is, most likely you haven't done enough, and you haven't done it for long enough. Because if we think about the numbers, right, for every outreach message you send, for all of the outreach messages you send, we are looking for up to 30% of the people you message to reply. And often it's closer to 10, 15, 20, right? 25% of that. 10, 15, 20, 30% of people might then go on to have a sales or just a conversation with you. And that's really our goal from outreach. And then maybe 25% of those will have a real opportunity, whether it's coaching or facilitation, and then you'll send proposals, and then out of those proposals, maybe 50% of those go on to be clients. So you can see that to work through that funnel, which is gradually reducing significantly through each stage, you have to do a lot of outreach before you can even tell if it works. So volume and duration is really important. And so don't I want you to have really realistic expectations that it's not going to come through immediately. You're going to have to keep at it for a while. And it will feel less awkward after you do the first five, I promise. And then every day you start again, it will feel awkward for the first few, and then you'll get into the rhythm. So remember also, and this is a bit more mindset, remember that discomfort is the price of entry into business, right? Because we are not getting new clients unless we're willing to do these things, unless we're willing to put ourselves out there and to be a little bit uncomfortable. So outreach is the price of entry into this business of your dreams. Discomfort is the price of entry. Right? And my business coach, her name's Ellie Swift, she's brilliant. You can look her up. She had a really great podcast episode recently where she said that she actively seeks out discomfort in her business life so that she can build comfort in her personal life. And I think that's a really good way to think about it, is that if we want to build this life with this business that serves us beautifully, then the price of that is discomfort in some areas. And that is not a bad sign. It's a sign that you're doing everything completely right. And I also want you to remember that the goal is not to feel not awkward about your messages. The goal is get real conversations booked in. And if you feel awkward about it, but the conversations are still getting booked in at a good rate, then maybe it's okay that it feels awkward now. A resource that really helped me with this sort of thinking is by Russ Harris, and it's called the Happiness Trap. So many of you will have come across this book, but I wonder if you've applied it to yourself in this context. And so what I would get you to do is just think, what are the values I have and the purpose and the meaning that I am seeking through this business that mean I have a big enough reason to feel awkward and just go on and do it anyway, right? And that I don't need to feel confident, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to leverage my courage instead. And I know that I have the courage to do it. I don't need to feel confident. I know that I can feel awkward and still do it and be okay at the end of the day. So just a few things to think about. That's a really great question. When I get a lot is how do I do these things? And like, we're talking about outreach here, but that could really apply to anything in your business where you're feeling awkward, whether that's posting on LinkedIn, being more visible, having a sales conversation. Right. All of the theories still apply. Do it more and it will get. It will feel less awkward. And don't expect to feel comfortable because that's not necessarily part of the gig. Part of the gig is that we will feel uncomfortable a lot of the time. Okay, the second question. How can I leverage my great corporate work that I'm doing without feeling like I'm coming across as braggy? Okay, so this is a great question. Because coaches are delightfully humble. Humility is often a strength. Our core strengths are listening and being really present and not being about us, being about the client. Right. Which means that when it comes to promoting what we're doing, particularly on LinkedIn, it's really hard and we have a great time. Amount of fear, often about being perceived to be braggy or, or salesy or like we're showing off. So the truth is you need to be doing a lot more promotional posts than you think you need to be. Right. You need to be doing it on a regular basis. And so what we're really talking about here, I think, leveraging this corporate work that you've done, is how do I post promotional posts referencing work that I've done in the corporate sector without it coming across as showing off or being braggy? So let's have a look at what a promotional post actually is. So a promotional post could be sharing what you do, right? Just the work that you do, how people can work with you. It could be sharing testimonials, it could be sharing case studies. It could be sharing examples of challenges that your clients are working through, whether that's client organizations or coaches. And I'd encourage you to stay connected to that client that we're talking to. Not only the coaching, you'll talk to both, but make sure you're looking at the challenges of the client as well. So those are all the sorts of things we're talking about when we have promotional posts. And the truth is, the work you have done before is the greatest fuel for your promotional posts. But there is some nuance in this, right, which is that we don't want to be seen to be plastering our clients across the Internet. And there is another question about confidentiality, which I'm going to answer next. So I'm not going to dive into that. But it's more. It's more about how do we feel good about sharing it in a way that feels good for us, and that if our client or our coachee were to see it, they would also feel good about it. Right. Because that's really important. And it's always been important to me to have really strong ethics around what I share and how I share it, particularly with my corporate clients. And that means, as an example is I wouldn't share a logo on my website unless I asked for permission. Now I know a lot of coaches do that. And look, I'm not telling you what you should do. I'm just saying from my perspective, I know that a lot of people working in HR&L and D, if they look at your website and they see a logo that is from their organization, let's say you've worked with one coachee there before and you're like brilliant putting that up there. They're going to be put off by that if they have a policy that they're local, can't be used without permission, which almost all large corporates and medium sized corporates do. So the first principle I guess for sharing anything, whether it's a testimonial quote or a case study, is ask. Right? So if you're going to use client names now, one exception to this is in your coach bio, which is a private document. It is not going on the Internet anywhere. You can speak to your clients, you can say what organizations you've coached in, you can talk a little bit in more specifics. That is a different perspective. But in terms of what you post on your website or on LinkedIn, permission is key. And so what that means is when you're asking for feedback in your post engagement feedback forms, you need to be very specific about asking what would you say to someone about your coaching experience? What would you say about working with me as a client? If it's, if you're into, if you're getting feedback from the client, may and then asking, I usually give them options about how they're willing to be identified. Is it title and organization? Is it title? Is it name? What are they willing for you to share? And you could give them an option to say yes or no to logos as well, for example. So I would ask very specifically, and that opens up a whole bunch of promotional posts that are very permission based. So then you'll have actual quotes for testimonials. Then you'll have, you might have case studies now where these ones are the obvious ones, the tricky ones are going to be what about if I want to talk about the sort of work I do and I want to talk about the challenges my clients are facing or the challenges my coaches are facing, like how open can I be about that? Can I tell stories. Can I give examples? And you absolutely can. However, the most important thing is that you de identify the individual, the client, the role so that no one would know who that is. And so that might mean that you take a story, take a case study, take a challenge that was being experienced and you remove identifying details. Or it might be that you share themes and commonalities across a range of coaches rather than speak specifically. So you could say something like a lot of a number of clients that I work with have this challenge or a number of coaches that I've engaged with are experiencing this. You can also in your promotion, if you for example, run a workshop, you can ask the client if you can share a photo. Now often clients will say yes because it reflects really well on them from an employee value proposition perspective. If they're seen to be doing development for their people, so often they'll say yes, particularly if they are going to post themselves themselves but and then it also gives them the opportunity to say oh no, absolutely not. In which case you can see their boundaries very clearly. But definitely ask permission. But here's the question, when does it become bragging? So if you are asking that it does not, right? You most likely need to be 100% more braggy than you currently are because people and clients want to see social proof. They will trust your credibility more easily when they know that others have trusted you with similar type of work. So I want you to push yourself to a slightly uncomfortable place to talking about the successes, the wins, the outcomes, the experience, the work, the stories, the case studies. Push yourself more than you would naturally. And I don't mean like more identifying features, no, but more sharing than you feel comfortable with. That's probably the right place. And I know like it's similar when people say oh, I don't want to be seen to be salesy. If you're worried about that, I guarantee you you are not salesy. So if you're worried about coming across as self centered or braggy, I guarantee that you're not. So I hope that one was helpful. Now related I also had this question of how do I share success stories while maintaining confidentiality? And I think I've already touched on this, but I just want to say confidentiality is of the utmost importance. It's one of our biggest ethical commitments as a coach. So we need to be really conscious that we are respecting that in our work. So again, I won't share details with names or organizations unless I've been given an explicit quote or permission to do so. Ditto photos. But what you can do is you can, as I said, change identifying details. You can talk about themes. That works. The gray zone, I think, is when you're talking about an individual coachee, their story or their experience or their challenges, which is really powerful, Right? Our clients and coaches, that is very compelling. But if it is identifiable, you either need permission, which is sometimes possible, or you need to change enough details that they are no longer identifiable. And another way of doing that is to combine two stories, right? So you could combine two stories, which can work without also feeling like you're just making something up. Because we also want that ethical boundary of not just making shit up to post on LinkedIn, which people do. And so sometimes themes, themes work. And combining things so that people aren't identifiable works as well. Okay, the next question and total pivot is what is the difference when you're working with an organizational client, what's the difference between the legal contract and the coaching contract and how to think about the two? So this is a question I am asked all the time because we're often talking, particularly this one comes up inside the accelerator a lot. We're talking a lot about how we engage with corporate clients. And it's like, hang on, the T's and C's in my proposal document that are signed off that form, the legal contract, is that the same as my coaching contract? And so I want to say very clearly that no, we're talking about two different contracts here. Now, there is a huge amount of overlap and that's why it's confusing. But with your client is the organization, your coachee is the individual that you're working with. Now, sometimes you won't have a coachee. You might have a workshop that you're facilitating, in which case you will have a. The contracting you do will be more on the moment in the workshop. It won't be documented in the same way as a coaching contract per se. Now, there are some items that will overlap, but in general, the legal contract is the terms and conditions that you engage with entity to entity, including things like payment, termination, liability, jurisdiction. And it usually will refer to a proposal or a schedule or an email for all of the specific inclusions in the piece of work, including fees and all of the above. The coaching contract is generally the agreement that exists between you and the coachee, and it speaks more to expectations and roles and things like policies around sickness and cancelling sessions and how much notice you need to give and confidentiality. So there is a lot of overlap, of course, because we also want our organizational clients to realize, to know what is being committed to. But that's generally how. Think about it more as like the official contract and then the rules of engagement between you and the coachee in the coaching contract. I hope that helps. Feel free to send me on LinkedIn. Any further, further questions? Okay. And our last question again, a real pivot. These are very broad and I love them. I don't want to have a photo shoot. I know I need to, but I don't want to. What can I do about it? So you might be predicting this, but the first thing I want you to do is if this is you are feeling really resistant to having a photo shoot, I want you to explore it a little bit deeper. Now I think most people know why photos are important because photos are the best way to add an element of humanity and connection into our websites, our LinkedIn, our assets, other things where we need people to see who we are. And I think as coaches, that's really important that we have this channel for connection. So photo shoot is a really having some professional photos done beyond just like a take a selfie or beyond like just a single headshot is ones that show. They might show you coaching. Sorry, I just dropped my microphone. If you had a bit of a noise there. Sorry. They show you in action. They show a little bit more of you. They show you in different ways and they are really. It's really important to have some photos and that doesn't mean you have to go spend a lot of money on it. I want to be really clear. I'm not saying that everyone has to have an expensive photo shoot. I'm saying we need photos as a way for people to connect with us. Now, generally, when people don't want to have one, what I hear is I hate being photographed. I hate how I look. I feel too awkward. I'm worried they're going to look bad. I don't know what's involved and I don't know how to arrange it or set it up. I don't know what I need. So if any of these are you and those are your reasons, then you need it more than anyone else, right? You absolutely need to get your photos taken, but you need the right photographer. The right photographer will make the difference between something that is where you get an outcome. Photos that you really love, that do the job and help you to grow as an experience. And the wrong photographer is probably not going to be. Not going to be great. So you really need to get recommendations, right? You need to find someone whose photos you like, and who had a great experience with their photographer. And the right photographers will have. They'll have lots of resources with you to help for you, to help you prepare, they'll have preparation guides, they'll help you put together shot lists, they'll help you think about what you wear, all of the above. So you want the right photographer. So my story of having photos taken is that I knew I need to had. I needed to have professional photos taken. And previously I just had some selfies that had been professional enough, I think I got my mum to take them, to be honest, and I just said, just take a thousand photos and one of them's going to be all right. And so one of them then became my. My profile picture on LinkedIn for about 10 years, maybe five. And so I had to arrange my first proper professional photo shoot and I was terrified. I actually did. I went and I saw a stylist to help me choose outfits. I got my hair and makeup done and I would recommend that if budget's not a consideration, it will help you with your confidence, but you don't need to do it and I don't. I certainly don't get my hair done. I often will get my makeup done, but I'll get it done at a shop that you. In Australia, we have one called Mecca, or there's a number of places and they do your makeup and you can purchase products for the value of that service and there's a lot of places that do that as well. But you can also get ones that come to your house and sometimes that helps. And if you don't require makeup, then that is even better. That's a bridge you don't have to cross. And so I did that and I felt awkward as heck, right? I felt so awkward, but I did it anyway. And then six months later I did it again and I felt less awkward and I did it with some friends so that we could take some photos of ourselves coaching each other. We had just in the background so we could do some of those professional shots. And then I did it again. And now what I do is I have a standing quarterly booking with a few other people. And it has been the biggest revelation in terms of building my comfort with visibility and showing up. Now, I'm not saying you need that. I do. Because when I'm doing launches and lots of posts and all of the above and my website and events, I need a lot of new, different photos, so I do it pretty frequently. But I'm definitely a person who, like many of you, has had Self image challenges for most of my life and I would say going through this process has been really helpful and it has helped me to have a bit of rev reality check and to say what how I show up is as me and I'm trying to be in business the most me I can be sound a bit like Dr. Seuss. I'm trying to be the most me I can be. How I show up is me. So I like that's been a real journey for me. And so if you are feeling similar, you have any of those challenges, know that I really get it and the best way out is through right now. I am going to give you an alternative which is that there are some AI photo shoot places and tools that are okay, right? They are okay. They will do the job. If you absolutely cannot have a photo shoot, however, you need to do it properly. And I don't mean just popping in chatgpt Here's a photo of me. Can you make me look xyz? There are designers who will help you and if you want to Message me on LinkedIn I can connect you to a designer who I believe has a short course on how to properly brief what are the right tools to use to create it. And I've seen some of her images and they are beautiful, very polished that sometimes maybe the issue is that they're too polished but hers look great and they don't look too fake and so I can let you know. So it is an option but I would say it may lose a bit of that connection because we know that on LinkedIn for example, it is the most rough selfies that are going to get the best connection. And so that is also the case with, with photos, right? With your photo shoot and AI is like the polished end of the spectrum. So you can expect maybe there'll be a little bit less connection. But I would rather you do that than do nothing. So I encourage you have a photo shoot do it. I recently organized one with my local accelerator members here in Western Australia with my photographer and it was extraordinary. They got the best photos and without exception they said that it was not what they expected. They felt great about it, they felt natural, they felt comfortable and they loved the results. And I think that is down to the photographer, the support of the photographer, your preparation and having a group of supportive people with you. So really encourage you to give that a try. Okay, now I've answered a whole bunch of questions. Obviously inside my program, the corporate to coach accelerator, we answering questions all the time. So we answer questions, we have events Q&As coaching sessions on a weekly basis. This week we have a masterclass on outreach. We have coaching Q and A calls and we also have our community where we answer our clients questions all the time. If you think you and we have accountability and we have, we review your assets, we do so much inside this program. Definitely check it out over@elliscarf.com CCA and you can read all of the details about it. And if you think that this is the time for you to get some support to grow your business without reinventing the wheel, without doing things the hard way and having to learn everything from scratch, learning from someone who has walked this walk right. I'm not just a coach who decided I'd coach coaches. I've been an executive coach for almost 20 years and I've worked with a lot of corporate clients, which is why I do do this work. Now if you would like to talk about this, you're ready to get some support, I'd love to have a chat with you so you can go to elliscarf.com bookacall and find time in my diary. And I would love to. I'd love to have a chat with you. So I hope you have a fabulous week and I'll be back again with an episode next week.