154: How To Courageously Communicate Expectations In Business - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski. In this podcast, we help course creators and coaches grow their businesses, improve their mindset, and work on the strategies that they need to grow their business. Now, if you're somebody that has a business, you're in the industry, a course creator, or a coach, I'd love to hear from you. Go through the rest of these podcast episodes, follow me on social media, join our Grow your Life Facebook group, and let's connect together to help you start to get more clients and customers in your coaching or course business. Now, today, today I want to talk about managing expectations with your course or coaching clients. This is such an important thing to do. And really, this goes into even the agency world, network marketing, e commerce, all of that. Any sort of online marketing can benefit from this. But I think especially coaches and course creators need to understand this, that your value follows the level of boundaries that you have. The value that you have follows your expressed expectations. Meaning what can they expect from you? Meaning when they buy from you, what can they expect? And knowing up front before they purchase? The expectations clearly representing those. And I think that this is an area that a lot of times, beginning course creators, beginning business owners in general deal with and struggle with because they want to make everybody happy. They want to please everybody. They don't want to lose a potential client because they're too high maintenance. You know, they don't want to say, well, I'm only available on this day. And they end up bending over backwards. And what ends up happening is at any time, when you bend over backwards for a client, for a student, for a customer, the value of what you're selling goes down. Now, I'm going to add a caveat to this. Customer service is of utmost importance. Making your customers feel loved and cherished and like the most important person in the world is of utmost importance. But you get to set how that relationship happens. Okay? And so that's a very important piece of this is there's a difference between pleasing your customers as far as you do everything they want and you setting healthy boundaries and you defining the relationship. Here's. Here's what I mean by that. Here's an example. Southwest Airlines is a great example of this. They don't have first class. If you want first class, you got to go to a different airline. It doesn't mean that Southwest is serving their client any less. Get that. In fact, they have better customer service than most of the other airlines. They really do. It's a better experience but they don't offer. So you don't go in expecting that they have first class because they make it very clear that they don't. Now, you can upgrade and pay a little bit more to get in the A group, right? We do that often when we travel, which is nice. If it's not a full flight, you kind of can get a whole row to yourself. With the wife and I, it's pretty, pretty awesome. But we're not going into there with Southwest expecting them to suddenly clear open a first class seat for us just because I want one. And that's the same thing with you. It's not customer service to give everybody what they want. Now, at the same time, in the marketplace, See, there's so many layers to this message. In the marketplace, you have to give people what they want, right? But you want to set clear boundaries and expectations. And so in the big picture, you're always giving the market what they want. You're creating products and services and offers based on what they want, based around what they want, not what you want them to want. Then you set clear expectations as to how that relationship is going to happen, how much money they got to pay when they got to show up, how they can access it if somebody doesn't like that. Now, there's a caveat to this. If 90% of everybody's like, hey, your videos don't work on my computer, you might want to fix your video platform, of course. But if you're getting, here's a great example. You're getting one person who writes you in, they want their money back because you're moving your hands around all the time. By the way, I've had this happen. I had somebody ask me for their money back because I moved my hands too much in the course. I move my hands around a lot. It's me, it's my personality, it's how I teach. And so I demonstrate that in all of my content and how I teach stuff. And so I'm not going to be the right person, the right fit for that person. I'm not going to change who I am and how I deliver content for one person because they want me to have my hands to my side and talk like this. You see what I'm saying? So that's setting clear expectations. I'm not going to be available at 2 o' clock in the morning just because a client in Europe or Australia wants me to be. I have a family, I have a schedule. I have times when I'm available to do coaching calls, setting clear expectations up front. And so understanding that, that's what I mean. Like it's not bad customer service for me to say I gotta sleep. Right. Just because they want me to be available at that time. And so, so that's what we're talking about is clearly defining the relationship. How do you connect with the client, how do they, how are you delivering what you want? You're not going to please everybody if they want somebody that's available at 2 in the morning, US time and their time there, maybe find a local coach. Right? I'm not a good fit for you. And be clear about that. I've let people know that up front. A big one that I set is with one on one coaching and consulting. I do not offer a money back guarantee. That's only on my courses. Have I lost some clients from that? Yes. But you see, usually, and in my experience, when people are looking for those types of guarantees, they're going to want to take advantage of it anyways. And they want to have a foot out and it's really not healthy in the coaching relationship for them to have a foot out the door anyways. And so they're not even ready for that level of service. They should go through the courses and the podcast and all that that I have that are low cost and free. And so setting clear expectations. Listen, I don't have a money back guarantee. I'm not gonna have a money back guarantee on my one on one coaching and consulting. And listen, by the way, you may not get the results that you want if you don't execute. And I'm gonna hold you accountable as much as I can, but I am not gonna be there in your office, in your face every single day making sure that you're doing the work that you're supposed to do that's on you. And if you don't get results because you didn't do the work, I'm not giving like you see what I'm saying? I expect you to do the work. I expect you to do what we talk about. I expect you to be a grown adult and trust that I work with grown adults that can hold themselves accountable. And so I don't look to work with people that need to be handheld. It's just a big thing. I don't work with people that need me to basically become their boss while I'm coaching them. It's not a good fit. And I make that very clear that self discipline is essential to working with me and to success as a business owner. Because here's the thing, you're just teaching bad habits. If you're giving people what they want all the time that they can't get in the real world, it's essentially in the coaching relationship. You're really in a safe environment teaching people how to, you're showing and demonstrating them how to operate in the real world. And, and what's great about this is they, they usually will never get mad at you for doing this. They usually will never get mad at you for saying and expressing how you can best be worked with, best done business with. They love it, they appreciate it, they are thankful that they didn't discover it later whether they become a client or not. You know, if you make it so easy to get access to you all the time, that's why really boundaries are a big part of this. People won't respect the value and it devalues what you offer. And so setting clear expectations and having healthy boundaries in your life, it'll make you a lot happier. Your clients will actually get more success, you'll get better case studies, you'll attract higher quality clients, people that actually do what you coach them on instead of just wasting your time when you do this. And so I believe that this is one of the most essential things that you need to do as a coach, as a course creator, as somebody that's building a brand online is, is, you know, sometimes we say, well, presentation is everything. There's only a, for one first impression. Absolutely. How you present yourself to your target customer is important. But you're not trying to please everybody. You're not trying to make everybody happy. See, not everybody can be your customer, not everybody can be your client. Not everybody gets that level of access to you. In fact, if you speak in front of a room of a hundred people, only about 10% of those people are really qualified to go to the next step with you. The other 90%, A, you need to stop worrying about them and stop trying to convince them and, and, and, and serve them to the point that you're not serving the 10% that you're supposed to work with. This is what I see again, a lot of beginning coaches and course creators do is they end up trying to serve everybody and give and please everybody and they get burnt out, stressed out, tired, and the clients that they're supposed to work with feel like they're also getting the short end of the stick. So the good side of this is you end up repelling the people that you're not supposed to work with and you can focus your energy on giving world class service to those that you're supposed to be working with. You give the best service that they, they, they love working with you. They don't want to work with anybody else. They don't want to go anywhere else. They don't want to learn from anybody else because of how you teach, how you help them, how you help pull out the greatness in them. And that's why having the ideal client is so important. Not focusing on every single person that's out there that, that wants you to help them reach a result, you just can't. You're not going to please everybody. What, Even if they have the problem that you, that you solve. And so another thing is, this is toxic. Clients are never your ideal client. It's true. They may check all the boxes of, okay, this person has the need, they're in the right place, they're the right fit. And then some red flags start coming up. Big red flag. They start complaining about every other coach that they've ever had in the past that screwed them over. It's a big one. I've, I've never had a good experience with somebody that says that because they'll find any, they're gonna look for any excuse to project that story onto me, onto you as the client to make you the bad guy and to further solidify that trauma wound that they have is usually what that is. And so you, you want to directly focus on those that are your ideal client and repel those that aren't. And your clear expectations and your boundaries will go a whole lot further to doing that for you. I've lost clients by. It's a lot harder, by the way, to set expectations later and to change them. You can do it, but you have to sort of ease people into it. Over the course of, like, it takes months sometimes to retrain somebody. It takes nothing to train somebody right out the gate. How the rules of engagement work, that's essentially what it is. It's rules of engagement, the rules of how this is going to work together. And when you do that up front, people respect it, they love it. They don't. They, they don't get disappointed when you ask them to do something differently because they know exactly what they're getting. They know that there's no first class, just like Southwest. And so that's the best thing. Manage the expectations in your coaching business. Manage the expectations with your clients. Manage how the relationship works. It's a lot harder to go back and change it. I've tried that. By the time you get to the point where they are doing the New expected thing. They're, they're kind of frustrated and they'll probably end the relationship anyways. And so sometimes, you know, you got to do that, you got to sift things up a little bit, you got to shake things up a little bit, you got to make yourself a priority as a coach, as a course creator. This is a huge thing that I think a lot of coaches and course creators, we're all about helping and serving other people. But to do that effectively, you have to make yourself a priority and take care of yourself. And that includes your schedule, that includes how people get access to you, that includes what you're willing to do, that includes not bending over backwards if it's major inconvenience. And here's the thing to ask, here's, here's a, here's a good filter for that. Can you bend over backwards in that way with a hundred other people? You might be able to do it with one person, with two people, with three people. But if you want to have a business, if you want to grow a business, can you do that with a hundred or a thousand people? The answer is probably no. And so if that's the case, you're going to want to charge more for that, you're going to want to eliminate that from there, you know, because you're, you're setting expectations with people that you can't meet. In fact, while I'm saying that, I'm starting to get even more and more convinced that I'm going to start limiting even some of the access I give people to me on social media a little bit. You know, I think it's healthy. You got to have boundaries. You can't be so accessible. Your value goes up. The value of what people are willing to pay you goes up by not being as accessible. And the target ideal client will do anything to work with you. And that's a healthy way to structure that and that's a healthy way to grow in a sustainable way to grow and build your business. Alright, listen, if you're somebody that wants to grow your business and you'd like me to come alongside you and help you grow your business, we do one on one coaching. You can buy a package at my website. It's $5,000 for 12 sessions. It's basically six months. We meet every two weeks together. Or you can break that up into six equal payments of $1,000 a month. If that's you. If you're somebody that would like to do that, send me a message, let me know. You can schedule a discovery, call with me to get you set up with that and to see if it's a good fit. Ultimately, it may not be a good fit. To be honest, not everybody who asked me to help them one on one is in the right place. And so that's what we'll look at on that discovery call together. That's only for those that are ready to take that next step. If you are ready for that, I'm ready to go there with you. All right, so you can check that out@jeremiah krakowski.com. send me a message. Send me a direct message, send me an email, and we can talk about what those next steps are to get you started. All right, Grow your life, everybody. If this podcast has helped you, if any of these episodes have helped you, share it with somebody, share it with other people. Pass it on, pass it forward. Could be about mindset, could be about funnels, could be about ads. Whatever it is, share this with somebody. This is a free resource right here. And so all I ask is just share it out to more people to get the word out, all right?