Episode 38: The Pressure Of A Client Who Borrows Money To Pay You
16 Apr 2019 · 10 min
This is a podcast episode titled "Episode 38: The Pressure Of A Client Who Borrows Money To Pay You" recorded in April 2019. The content features Julie Chenell as the sole speaker, addressing entrepreneurs and service providers about managing client expectations and the pressures of delivering results when clients have made significant financial investments. Julie shares insights on setting realistic expectations, the value of online marketing as digital real estate, and maintaining integrity in service delivery. The episode also promotes her membership program and related workshops for digital marketers and agencies.
Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie, and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing amazing. I wanted to talk to you today about a question that came up in one of our Facebook groups. And this is from a service provider who is a digital marketer. And basically she's saying that she got a client and this client has really, basically made a very large investment in her as the marketer to, to produce all of this, the funnels, the content, the launch, everything. And she knows that he had to sell some of his stock and investments to make that first installment, that first payment. And so she's very torn because she wants, she feels the pressure to be successful. She feels the pressure to make sure that it all works right? And I think a lot of service providers and anyone who's in the service based industry is going to feel this sort of pressure when somebody pays you a lot of money and you don't have a crystal ball. And so that's what I want to talk about today. When you don't have a crystal ball, someone pays you a lot of money, you know, they're going out on a limb to pay you a lot of money, which just adds to the pressure of, oh my gosh, I have to make sure that I perform and I want to make sure that this is successful. And this is all like, these are very good questions to ask. And so I, I answered her in the thread, but I want to talk about that here with you guys. So the very first thing I'm going to say about this is, number one, the better you are at setting expectations in life, just in general, the happier you're going to be. This is something that I'm learning, actually, even though I already knew it. I feel like I'm going around the mountain of it again in a deeper way. Set expectations. So imagine the expectation if you were a contractor, right, and someone came to you and said, I want to build a school or I want to build a hospital, right? How much money would it take? How much time would it take? And how long would it take for the money and the investment to come back?
Right.
And so a lot of people would have no problem, even if it's a private school, let's say, doing that, making that investment, knowing it's going to take a while for that investment to pay back. And this happens everywhere in the realm real world of business.
Right.
People have to take loans and capital and make investments, and it takes a while. Somehow in the digital world, we think that we don't have to follow the laws of time and space and money, and we do. And so people think that they should be able to get their ROI back within five minutes. And so if you can set the expectations of what you're building. Because online marketing is like online real estate, right?
Right.
It's as valuable as real land sitting on the planet. This is just online real estate. This is why people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for domains. So set the expectation that as a digital marketer, service provider, you are creating online real estate for them. And that kind of investment sometimes takes time. The second thing you can do is you can set benchmark conversion rates. And I talk about this a lot. In fact, I think there's an earlier episode where I outlined this. Come up with conversion rates that you know are industry standards so that they can see, oh, wow, okay, this is going to cost this much. So it's probably going to take me about six months to recoup the money that I invested and then it'll start to turn a profit. And they can see that and not be freaked out when their money doesn't come back to them in the first five minutes. So that's the second thing you do. Third, you know, when you are a digital marketer and agency and you are in integrity, right? And you care about your customers and you deliver a quality experience, the reality is, is that if that client doesn't start this with you, then who? And that's the question I often ask. I'm like, well, I could scale back, I could shrink back. I could be like, oh, you know, I shouldn't do this because, like, what if I can't produce the results? Or, you know, you can, like, play all these mind games, but if you don't do it, if you don't step up and give your best work, then the likelihood that the client would go and find someone super scammy or horrible or with a bad reputation or somehow end up in a bad spot that he would not have ended up in had you just stepped up, showed up and said, you know what I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this to the best of my ability, and I'm gonna charge for it. And I'm gonna get like, that is actually serving that customer, because that customer is now not with somebody who's not gonna do a good job.
Right.
And that is tremendously valuable because if he doesn't start it with you, the question is, then who? And the second thing is, if there's not another who, what is the other option? If the client has no idea how to do it, right, he's going to have to pay in money or in time.
Right.
Or both.
Right.
And so when you pay in time, sometimes it can take years and tons of mistakes.
Right.
When you pay in money, it happens much faster and you can often avoid mistakes. And these are years that he could be serving his customer base that he's not doing because he's paying in time and money. So I think as a service provider, it's awesome that we ask this question, and it's awesome that we take our responsibilities seriously. But I think that it's important that we remember that we can set the expectations for the customer. We can frame the conversation so that they understand that they are investing in an online real estate, an online foundation that's going to pay them back for years to come. We also can know in our heads privately that we need to step up. If we are good marketers and we are good at what we do in our business and our job, like, we have the obligation to sell to those people so that they don't end up with the crappy ones.
Right?
And at the end of the day, you, as whatever you do, social media, copy ads, funnels, coaching, whatever it is, you are investing the money and the time to learn, and that is valuable and that is worth something. And that is the part that you bring to the table. You do not have a crystal ball. There's nowhere in real life, not in college, not when you go rent some storefront on the street where you hold the landlord or the professor or whoever it is responsible if you don't do your part. And so understanding where your part ends and their part begins, and set that expectation that, yeah, the road's going to be bumpy, the dirt you're plowing is going to have rocks. But, you know, as John Maxwell says, everything worthwhile is uphill all the way. And when you set that expectation for that customer and that client, and they have a mission and a vision to build this business, whatever the business is, you can step into that confidently. And not worry if they're taking a loan or whatever, cashing in their stocks or whatever they're doing, because you just show up 100%, and then it's their job to show up 100%. And that is my way of really mitigating those sort of expectations. And sometimes things take time, and nobody likes time.
Right?
Even in my mastermind, I have people who, you know, it took them a solid year to get something converting. And that's never fun. You never want to tell people, oh, it's going to take you a year, right? Because some people, it doesn't take a year, and some people, it takes longer. But once they finally get that momentum and they hit their stride, they will be able to see all of the work that you've done to get them to that point. And if you're doing the best work you can, this is something that you probably should put to bed. Don't worry about this anymore. Stop letting that pressure cause you to shrink back or think that you can't go out there and charge and somehow take responsibility for something that is really two people coming together to take equal responsibility in their arenas. So I hope that helps. And, you know, if you're listening and you're like, okay, this makes so much sense, but you know what? I don't think I'm very good yet. You do have a moral responsibility to not overcharge. You want your value and your expertise to match, and you want your price to match that. So does it mean taking less? Does it mean being honest? All that kind of stuff? Yes, absolutely. And in fact, inside of Create youe Laptop Life, which is a membership program that I run with alongside of ClickFunnels, teaching service providers and agencies how to build these types of businesses, I have a workshop called no Story, no Results, no Expertise. And it's really how you get started in a business and, and remain in integrity even when you don't have as much clout yet as other people. And so if that sounds like you, you can go to freelancersecrets.com you can watch a presentation I did at Funnel Hacking Live, you can sign up for Create youe Laptop Life, and you can get that workshop. And that workshop will also help you with this particular issue. So have a great day, guys. Talk to you soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to Create youe Laptop podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.