Katie McManus, a business strategist and leadership coach, delivers a short live video addressing a common fear among new business owners: "What if I get too many clients?" She reframes the fear as a lack of self-trust and fear around money, uses a Brené Brown anecdote to illustrate catastrophic thinking, and reassures viewers that sudden inundation of clients is unlikely. Practical takeaways: start small and build systems as demand grows; use platforms like Dubsado and ClickUp for project-based work and Acuity for scheduling/billing; if more than ~50% of sales calls convert, consider raising prices or hiring help. The video is interactive (answers live comments) and includes brief promotional mentions of upcoming pricing/money talks and a webinar about reaching a first six-figure milestone.
Questions this video answers
November 16, 2021
Dubsado and ClickUp for project-based work; Acuity for scheduling and billing.
If more than 50% of sales calls convert to yes, you are likely charging too low and should raise rates.
Chapters
Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. So excited to be talking to you this evening about a topic that comes up for me a lot with potential new clients. And just in the coaching world that I am in, I'm getting, oh, I just got a notification that I went live. Hello? Anyway, and it's super normal, but it's something that I want to debunk this evening. Evening. And I, I wish I could just do this live and fix this for everyone so it's not a concern ever again. But I know it's not how the world works. So let's dive into it and I'm sure I'll talk about it again. Now this fear comes up for pretty much everyone. Coaches, consultants, artists, copywriters, whoever, whenever they're starting a business. And this fear is, what if I get too many clients with an underpinning of oh, shit, I'm not going to be able to handle it? And what an amazing problem to have. Oh, my God. Let's just first and foremost imagine you have too many clients. You have too many high paying clients who are so excited to work with you that they know that you're kind of overloaded on work and they're like, I don't care, I don't care. I want to get in with this person. They're amazing. I need to be able to access them in some way, shape or form. Amazing problem to have. Right? Okay. So before I dive into this, I just want to do some housekeeping. Hi, whoever's watching, we're doing this on the Facebooks, on LinkedIn and on YouTube. Now sometimes Streamyard does not show me all the comments. So if you comment and I don't call you out, know that I'm not mad at you. It's just that the technology is not my friend in this moment. And sometimes it just picks and choose who chooses who I get to see. So if I don't call you out, it's not you, it's just the technology. And I do love this to be interactive. So if you have any thoughts or questions, please do chime in now. Okay, so let's talk about this. Okay, so we're just gonna slow it on down. What do I do if I get too many clients? Okay, so if you're just starting your business, I want you to just take a deep breath. Okay. And let that go. Okay. Because let's look at the reality of what happens when you start a business. Okay. The reality is you're going to do some research. You're going to find out who your ideal client is, you're going to design a website and then nothing's going to happen. Like literally nothing is going to happen in the beginning, okay? It's not like you're going to design a website or post one thing on social media that you're accepting clients and all of a sudden 20 people are just going to book calls with you and all sign up and all want to give you their credit card. Okay, I know, I know, I'm sorry. That's really bad news to get. But it should be a huge relief because starting a business, the universe is only ever going to give you what you can handle. Okay? So if you can only handle two or three clients, guess what? You're going to work for those clients. You're going to be posting regularly, you're going to be sending things out to your email list, you're going to be asking for referrals. It's going to take work for you to get those clients. They're not just going to come out of thin air. I just did a sales lab for my one on one clients and I forgot to drink any water between them now, so I'm a little parched. So anyway, so it's not like you're going to post your website and have it up and running and all of a sudden, boom, you're going to be a millionaire and all these clients are going to come through. So I just want you to take a chill pill, a deep breath. Not gonna happen. And there are a lot of things that go into building that business. If you're wanting to build a successful business where you do actually have a wait list, we need to get on the phone. Just shoot me a DM after this. Live. I'm more than happy to talk to you and see, you know what would be the best support for you. Right? Then there's wherever you are in your business. But let's talk about this fear, because this fear is bullshit for a few different reasons. Okay? So logically, it doesn't make any sense, okay? You're not going to open your business and all of a sudden be inundated with too many clients. Now, the fear is ultimately about you not trusting yourself, which is also bullshit. Okay? You're not trusting yourself to be able to handle a huge number of clients, to not be able to handle good things happening in your life. Oftentimes it's about you being afraid that you cannot handle good money for your good work coming into your life. The fear around money is a huge one. Here okay. Because too many clients means you're getting a lot of money. And if you have too many clients that you can't handle, then you may get upset and they may take your money from you. Okay, cool. Let's just set that aside for a moment. Okay? At some point in your life, you've proven to yourself that you're not good with money. You've proven to yourself that you can't be trusted when things go wrong. Maybe you see yourself in a very negative light in that regard. And I just want you to pause for a second right now. Okay? I just want you to pause and I want you to think back on a really tough thing that you got through in your life and think back to what it felt like while you were going through it and how bad it was. I know this is kind of a negative one. I'm sorry. But it's going to get better. Don't worry. Okay, so. And here you are. Like, let's just jump back to today. Here you are. You made it. You went through hell in whatever moment that was in your life, and here you are today. You made it. You've survived, you've thrived. Okay? You have overcome in so many different scenarios. Now, it doesn't mean that at some point in your life, trust wasn't broken with yourself. Okay? Maybe you invested in the wrong thing or you trusted the wrong person or you didn't live up to your own expectations of yourself. All that stuff happens. Now, a lot of the work that I do with clients is reconciling a lot of that stuff, you know, showing you that you can keep trust with yourself, that you are reliable, that you can trust people in. In whatever manner you need to to become a success, so on and so forth, that you can trust money to consistently come to you and not leave you this fear around. What do I do if I get too many clients? Is not really a fear around, like, clients being upset or whatever. It's a fear that I'm not going to be able to handle it. And then all that success that I've built up is actually just going to go away. It's going to evaporate. And it's so easy. It's so easy. When you start a business that's based around doing something that you absolutely love. To not feel like it's real, to not feel like the money is real, to not feel like the business is real, because you're just on fire. You're doing what you're. You love every day, all day. And it's really Easy to paint that picture for yourself that if it gets too good, it's all going to crash and burn around you. Now, I want to talk about Brene Brown for a second because she talks about this really succinctly, and I can't remember which book it is, but she starts telling the story about this family, and it's. It's Christmas. And it was a. Like, it snowed the night before. It was beautiful, beautiful Christmas. And they saw family and, you know, they. They exchanged gifts that were really meaningful and they got some really beautiful pictures and the kids were getting along and mom and dad are, like, hugging and just so delighted with their life. And they get in the car and they get on the highway to drive home, and our brain, Our brain immediately goes to, oh, no, they're going to get in a car accident. They're going to die. They're going to crash and burn. Okay? I mean, if we look at the television programming that we have, that's essentially what we're fed every day, all day, okay, if too many good things happen, it's going to end in disaster. And also, no, it doesn't always end in disaster. It very rarely does. We just highlight those stories because the other stuff is insignificant. Gabe. Working on getting myself too many clients. Lol. Yes, I fully support you in getting too many clients, Gabby. Amazing. Now, okay, so that story about mom and dad and the kids getting in the car after a beautiful Christmas and driving home on the highway and us thinking, oh, my God, they're going to crash and burn. We have this mentality that. And we apply it to our business all day long. We think, okay, if I post too much, too many people are going to comment and too many people are going to follow me. And so I'm going to hold back because I don't want to become too big, okay? I don't want people to pay too much attention to me. I don't want all these things because we think that that spotlight is going to be too much for us. We think that having to manage that many connections is going to be too much for us. Now, we always forget that we are the leaders of our own lives, right? And if too many people want to connect with us, guess what, we just turn it into a private account or we don't accept anymore connection requests. You know, if people want to shine a spotlight on us, we can stay out of the spotlight. That is a possibility as well. If too many clients want to sign up with us, guess what, you can max out at 15. You can say, hey, thank you so much for your interest. I'm not taking on clients right now. I am building out a wait list though. So if you're interested, I will have opportunities opening up in April. Okay. We have control. There's. There's no point in your life or your business where you can completely lose control in. In these arenas. So, Gabbie, so what systems or processes that you can recommend to help simplify the idea of taking on too many clients, helping manage projects or delegating tasks? Oh, okay. So. Well, it depends on what kind of work you do. So, I mean, if you're project based, like Dubsado and ClickUp are two great platforms that I personally use to be able to manage those relationships and different tasks that you have to complete. But also if you're in a coaching model and you don't really have to track tasks with your clients, just tracking, like having a system that does billing and scheduling with them is super simple and I love acuity for that. But Gabby, I'm happy to hop on a call with you if you're looking for a more detailed answer than that, because I obviously don't know anything about your business. But anyway, I wanted to keep this short tonight because I. I don't want anyone holding themselves back because they are afraid that they're going to be too successful. Okay. I don't want success for you and I don't want you diluting that any more than you already have. Okay? Get out there, get your clients. Be seen. You can't be a secret and a success after all. Be seen and just show up as you because people are waiting for it. Okay. Anyway, I. Let's see. Langston, is too many clients an indication your prices are too low? It certainly is. Langston, I'm so glad you asked that. If too many people are saying so. Actually, let's just take this a different direction. If too many people are saying yes on your sales calls more than 50%, you're charging way too low for your service. You need to be upping your rates. So. Absolutely. LinkedIn. And David, you guys are the same mind. I love it. Yeah. If you are actually having to turn away clients, isn't that a sign that you have should raise your rates? Yep, absolutely. Or hiring associates to deal with them because there may. There may be also a huge need for what you provide. Langston and David need to hang out. Yes, absolutely. I'm actually going to be going into some money stuff and some what you should be charging talks later in the week. So if you're curious about that. Do turn do tune in. I'm also going to be doing a webinar on how I got to my first six figures on Thursday evening. So if you're curious about that, I will be posting about that tomorrow. You can register for it and a lot of this is folded in there. But anyway I'm keeping the short and sweet tonight. I have to go do laundry. It's my least favorite task and I'm super not stoked about it. But thank you guys so much for joining Langston, David, Gabe and everyone else who is watching who I didn't get to talk to in the comments. Hope you have a great weekend or weekend. Oh my God. I'm jumping ahead to the end of the week. I hope you have a great week. It is Monday and I'll see you all tomorrow because I'm doing a live every every weekday this week. Anyway, talk to you soon. Bye.
