We have launched a Facebook group called Empowering Women with Work that Works, designed to support all women (not just mums) who are looking to get their career mojo back. With this in mind we've been sharing valuable content to help women to build their confidence and create the work life that they deserve. So far, we've covered areas including imposter syndrome, confidence building, digital trends and tools, branding yourself online and how to put in a persuasive flexible working request. It’s proving to be a very powerful and supportive community and we’ve already reached nearly 3,000 members!
As part of our exclusive content, we’re inviting some fantastic expert speakers into the group to share their top tips and tactics to help build career confidence and happiness. One of our very first guests was Lydia Kimmerling - otherwise known as The Happiness Explorer - who joined us via Facebook ‘Watch Party’ to discuss what's preventing us from working with the clients and making the money we really want.
Here’s Lydia’s top five most common blocks - recognise any?
- Not being specific enough about who you want to work with. ‘You can’t be for everyone!’ The more we drill down to the specifics of who we are for, the easier it then is to develop our marketing. Scatter gun approaches don’t work.
- Having low self-worth. When we first become our own boss, we’ve often come from being employed. When someone employs you the guidelines are clear - you’re giving your time for their money. When you have to sell, you’re doing it under the guise of the business. When you start running your own business, you’re now having to sell yourself and it can bring up self-doubt. This is where we really need to work on ourselves and value what it is we’re offering. The more we love, value and respect ourselves, the more confident we will feel going for the money and the clients that we want.
- Money blocks. We all have them! These are often subconscious, inherited beliefs rooted in our upbringing and they can get in the way of us asking for what we want in terms of income. We need to ‘undo the knots’ to understand what our relationship with money is. We also need to move away from the ‘employee mindset’ of exchanging our time for money. When you’re an entrepreneur you need to think in terms of the outcomes you deliver in exchange for money. Lydia recommended a book which helped her with this: ‘How Rich People Think’ by Steve Siebold.
- We don’t know how to market. We need to learn the skills and strategies of marketing and then find what works for us because it’s not the same for everyone. It’s often a case of trial and error and sometimes you have to ‘put out some clangers’! But it’s OK, people only remember the last thing you did and it’s an important part of how we grow and evolve.
- Your goal is too big. It’s good to have an ambitious goal, but we need to break it down. It’s not one big step - it’s hundreds of steps and you can’t plan every one. Just get off the starting block! Lydia's advice for splitting a big goal down into manageable pieces is:
- Write a list of all the things that you need to pay for in a month so that you have an idea of the bare minimum that you need. This is not the ultimate aim of course, but it will help you off the starting block!
- Once you know what that figure is, then translate that into how many clients / programmes / packages you’d need to sell to achieve that.
- Then go out and work on getting that number of clients!
Lydia is a Professional Certified Life and Business Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation and has over 2,500 hours of coaching experience. She has been named ‘Guru To Watch’ by The Times, and was the runner-up in Psychologies magazine’s search for a New Wise Voice. She has an 18,000+ strong following on social and is the official coach for McVitie’s Go Ahead! Summer Buddy Project with Ferne McCann and Bradley Simmonds.
For more tips from empowering women, join our supportive Facebook group here
