As a woman in business. you're ready for bigger things this year, wrote the vision board, and documented it in the journal...
But two weeks in...let's do a reality check. ๐ค
Following last week's themes. It's about taking action.
Are you making progress or stalled for that ONE big thing you want for yourself this year?
- Getting visible
- Attracting better-fit clients
- Making more money
Whether you want to go after promotions, attract perfect-fit clients for your consultancy, speak on stages, guest on podcasts, write a book, or share insights on LinkedIn, it's all about powerfully positioning yourself with a clear brand to become seen, and heard, and valued in your field.
Today's show is all about getting and keeping the 3 steps to build the HABIT of COURAGE to do those things (and more),
And as a women consultant, service provider, and founder, this episode is for you. This week's guest, Laura Khalil helps women consultants and founders go after higher-paying B2B clients
๐ฆ๐ต๐ฒ'๐น๐น ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ:
- ๐๐ฉ๐บ ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ๐ข๐จ๐ฆ ๐๐ด ๐ข ๐๐ข๐ฃ๐ช๐ต
- ๐๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐๐ญ๐ฆ๐น ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ค๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด ๐ต๐ฐ ๐๐ฆ๐ต ๐๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐ต
- How to Make More Money This Year + Advice on Niching and Pricing
LINKS
Connect with Laura Laura Kahlil on LinkedIn
Michelle B Griffin is a thought leadership-focused personal brand and PR strategist and founder of Standout Women Media who positions established women experts and authors into visible industry authorities.
If you're ready to up-level, a powerful personal & PR brand foundation are key. Become clear, confident, and cohesive in your branding, positioning, messaging, LinkedIn, and PR strategy in 30 days with my Visible Brand Authority Acceleratorโข.
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โWelcome back everybody to this week's session of Ask the Brand Therapist. I'm Michele B. Griffin and I have an amazing guest welcome to the show. Laura Kahill.
It's really fitting today because we're going after the big things that we want. Start of the new year, we're two weeks into it. How many of us are actually doing those big things we want? Today's all about how to really own it, change it, and really learn how to bust through and build the habit of courage, do the big things. And this is a special shout out to my listeners who are women founders, B2B service providers, because laura, who's specialized in this, so she's going to work it all together and help us get what we want. And for those who haven't met you yet, Laura, please tell us where you are, what you do and who you help. First of all, I have to say for anyone who's watching this live, my mouth, my jaw was literally like on the floor when we went live because I was watching your intro and that was so freaking amazing.
Incredible. Yeah. And I am, I recognize many of the faces, so I feel like I'm in good company with some of your former guests. So hi everyone. My name is Laura Kalil and I am focused on helping consultants and professional service providers go after bigger.
Contracts and work with those higher paying clients. Part of my desire to do this comes a lot from my own background in history, but it's really focused at the end of the day on rebalancing the skills of financial justice in favor of women, because we know, I just got to go to this really quickly. We know from the research that women give more often to their philanthropic causes.
But we don't have the financial leverage of our male counterpart. And so by helping women, you know, get the bag, earn the money, we really have the opportunity to make a real change in our communities, our capitals, our classrooms. And that is really what drives me is I love to see women making really good money.
You know, doing it with companies that really, really need them. We are so aligned because you want them to make money. And before that, I want her to be like really visible, well branded, stand out so they can get those opportunities and that financial outcome. So when we tie it all together, what is stopping it?
And I think it's the word we're going to talk about and intertwine it with all the things you talked about is courage. Is that the fundamental problem and thing we need to work on? I think developing the habit of courage, learning how to strengthen that muscle.
I know we're going to talk about that today and really leaning into the things. That scare us because most business problems, in my opinion, are actually personal problems in disguise. So while we have all created great goals for our year ahead, we've created our vision boards. We have a sense of what we want to do.
The thing that is stopping us is often not always, but often. Some form of fear in masquerading as a limiting belief. Who am I to go after bigger companies? Who am I to hit this revenue goal? Who am I to be, you know, like a CEO? You know, there's all kinds of stories we tell ourselves that just stop us before we ever get started.
So learning how to actually lean into the fear and develop that habit. That habit of courage can actually completely transform your year ahead this whole thing could be insert, whatever it is for you, but for the sake of this topic, and because you and I want such bigger goals, visibility and financial, justice for women.
Let's intertwine those things because as a value exchange money helps us know our value and give value and then just keep circling and growing as you said. So let's tackle that because money mindset is a huge issue. It's really, bad for women for whatever reason.
We just need to know how to tackle it and get through it. Well, one thing I want to say is if you ever grew up in a family where there wasn't enough money money was always a cause of stress within the family unit and money was therefore seen as a bad thing.
Why would you ever want it? And why would you ever want to collect it? Because it's always, it was, it's, there's an ingrained learned habit. That this is a stressor. So that's just something for everybody to consider when you're thinking about money is like, where do my beliefs about this come from?
And, you know, money is such a loaded term. And when we talk about the value of things, it's such a loaded term. So the first way we can tackle it is first of all. You want to make sure, and this is just really simple, you want to make sure that you are surrounded by people who are doing bigger things than you.
It's really, you know, one of the best pieces of advice I always got when it was about building my business was someone said to me, you don't want to be the best player in the band. And I thought, what does that mean? And what I came to realize is that if I'm in a room, if I'm among my peers and I'm not learning anything because like, I'm actually the one teaching everyone and you know, I'm the one with the, big ideas, but nobody else is sort of like able to mirror that or acknowledge that.
That doesn't help me expand and that doesn't show me the possibilities. One of the greatest things we can do is put ourselves in a position to be around people, whether those are peers, mentors, coaches, advisors, whatever it is, who have been where you want to go. And to learn from them, I, I would be very cautious who you take advice from in particular, if you're taking advice from your family, because our family loves us very much.
And they also have a vested interest in keeping us safe. And to stay where you are, because that's no, and like, even if we're miserable or we're not happy or we're dissatisfied, sometimes the known is safer than the unknown. And so the first thing I would encourage everybody to do when we're thinking about flexing that muscle of courage is go find the room.
Go find the advisors, go find the people who have done what you want to do and immerse yourself in them and immerse yourself in how they think and what they teach and what you can learn from them because it will expand your limits. So that also means get rid of the. Negative Nelly's the negative Ned's who you got to look around and have some awareness. Wow. Let's assess this person next to me. Are they helping me? Are they at my level, a high low? So, you know, yet gently do it, but that's really true.
I mean, as cliche is that you're as good as the five people around you. And most people who are that little bit higher, they are very happy to help guide you because they've been there too. And that's, you know, hope the hope is that we all pay it forward and backward and all that.
Absolutely. They are cheering on your success, you know, like if you've ever had that friend or even just people, you know, in your sphere who kind of, when you talk about getting a big contract, say, how the hell did you do that? Like kind of almost like incredulously, like you did that.
Okay. Yeah. If you're meeting people like that, we need to find new people because that is not the attitude. The vibe we want to be under is with people who are like, Oh, you just got your first 50 K contract. I knew you could do it. Let's go for a hundred next. Okay. So you want to be around those types of people and, and people who have achieved what you want.
They're, they're here. We're all standing on the shoulders of giant. Everyone is here to help lift us up, especially if they're above us, they're here to help. So I encourage you to find groups and people and communities where you can get lifted up. Now, there's, there's another sort of important aspect of all of this, which is that your stuff, whatever your stuff is, and you may not know what your stuff is, it's going to get triggered as hell.
As you start doing this, it's going to get messy and you're going to be like, I have run out of time in the day to do the one thing that I know I should be doing now. My clients know that the most important activity we can do in our business is business development. It's not, in my opinion, dancing on Tik TOK.
It is not, overwhelming ourselves. With endless marketing activities, marketing is important. However, business grows through business development and through relationship building. And a lot of times people can be really scared to do that stuff because they don't know what to say. They're not sure how to do it.
They don't want to appear pushy. Those are, by the way, those are just stories. None of that. That is necessarily true.
So what I would encourage everyone to do is you don't have to master business development tomorrow. All you have to do is begin to flex this muscle that you may never have flexed. By just taking one small step. It is one small step. The other thing that matters is consistency.
You don't have to do big things every day or big things once a year, but you do have to do. A little bit consistently and that little bit consistently, it's like compound interest. That's the thing is small steps. Consistently done. And I mean, micro, that's exactly what I talk about my PYOT framework. The power and the payoff of putting yourself out there. I'll link in the show notes because it's micro impressions, nano steps, get us there. So is that number two in the three ways to form the habit?
Number one is surround yourself by people ahead of you. Number two is realize it just takes small things to do consistently. what is the third thing, Laura? I want everyone to consider That every time you set a goal, so if you have created a vision board, or you have just set your goals for the year ahead, every time we set a goal, we either consciously.
Or unconsciously set a corresponding challenge. When I work with my clients, a lot of my clients are working on building quarter of a million dollar businesses, quarter million dollar plus consulting businesses. If you are setting a goal, a financial goal of any kind, You're also at the same time choosing your challenges.
So I want everyone to be very aware we only grow at the border of support and challenge. And so we have to be aware that in pursuit of those goals, those things are going to help our life. We also. Are going in pursuit of overcoming certain challenges at the same time, and we cannot deny that we have to say yes to it all and understand that by only by overcoming those challenges only by leaning in.
To what really scares us to that thing we have desperately been avoiding or hiding from that we will actually get where we want to go. I tell people, choose your challenges, choose your heart, choose the thing. That you feel is going to suck. It's probably not going to suck as much as you think. It's probably not going to be as hard as you think.
A lot of that is built up in our minds more than it is actually in the action of doing it,
and I can tell you that it is not obvious. I cannot speak for everybody, but I can tell you that it is not always as it appears. Yes. So watch out. So you just got to figure out what's true to you and almost don't go after what's someone else's goal is. It has to be. What is your goal? And why do you actually want it? Why does it matter? Why do you care? Why are you willing to do this? When you have those kind of like reasons you're going to show up and do it. And that's what you want to strive for. And that's what I teach my clients.
And my roadmap is the first step in my brand GBS is your purpose. You know, passion is one thing, but when you tie it to a purpose, your reason for being the thing that gets you up out of bed and keeps you going, when you hone in on that, it is your brand's North star and it keeps you on track. So absolutely do that.
So those three steps are. Be surrounded by people who are way kind of ahead of you and the best way to keep you growing. Number two, to get that growth, it doesn't have to be big. Small things consistently add up, like compound interest, which I say all the time about personal branding as well. And number three, your goals and your challenges.
Should match. So these are exactly how to flex that muscle, build the courage that helps us do the big things. Let's really hone in and some high level things to help women's service providers, women, founders, consultants really go after this year and make more money. So I think it is really important. That people understand the market that they're going after and the problems they solve. And I know that sounds maybe very fast seal, but we need to truly understand.
Who is my market and what are the problems I'm solving for them? Entrepreneurs typically at a certain level, do not like to specialize because they feel that if they specialize, they are going to lose potential business. This is wrong. It is just flat out wrong. What is true is that we are not Oprah.
We are not a major multimillion dollar organization, and we don't have time to do sales and marketing to everybody on the planet. So we have got to hone in on our message, understand that specialization pays a premium and that if people come to you. From outside of your market and they want to work with you, you can always work with them.
But specializing on what you do and who you do it for will make your marketing go further and will actually help you stand out from the sea of people who don't want to do that because they perceive that they will lose out. In fact, it is the narrowing. That is the path to freedom.
I call this the narrow lane approach because when you say niche, people freak out and start saying all this stuff, but I'm a hundred percent with you. People don't search, you know, generic terms.
They need more narrow to find their actual people even more so this year is. Is even more important with AI flooding in the market and all the garbage out there. Specialized is key. So what are some of the other high level things? And then we're going to ask you your actual tip, Laura, to really get out there, build that courage, make that money this year.
The other thing I would say is that people often, when we talk about pricing. We haven't talked about like, well, what am I worth? And this is the wrong question to be asking. I believe that the quality of our lives is based on the quality of the questions we ask ourselves. And so we have to ask ourselves better questions.
So instead of asking, what am I worth? Because first of all, you are priceless. So that's not even the question I want you to ask yourself, what is the value? Of what the problem I saw worth to the client. Instead of making it about me, it's not about me, I have a client recently who she just got a 30, 000 a month retainer.
How did she get a 30, 000 a month retainer? Because we focus on the value to the client. And if you're solving 10 million problems for people, then 30, 000 a month is not actually that much money to solve a 10 million problem. I just would ask everyone to sort of like reframe it instead of making it about me.
Make it about them and the value it is to our client. The bigger the problems you solve, the more it is worth in the marketplace. Value is everything. That's what money is exchange of value. And so take you out of the equation and then it's less personal. Those are great things to pump us up. Laura, a woman in business, founder, service provider, wants to get the courage.
What's one thing you really would say, start here, do this now. I want to tell everybody to commit to yourself this year by choosing to focus on what you want to do this year.
Focus on one thing you want to do this year. And one thing you really want to dig in. And commit to and do really, really well. And by really well, I don't mean it has to be a hundred percent every single day. Some days let's face it. We've got lives, we have children, we have families, we have things going on.
You're not always going to be able to give a hundred percent. So instead I want you to focus on if I can only give 50 percent today, How can I give 100 percent of 50 percent today? How can I give my best of whatever is available to me today? And by focusing on just one thing that you want to do in the next 365 days, you will see things turn around.
The challenge here is not giving into shiny objects we typically run towards a shiny object at the moment when the newness and the dopamine effect of something new has worn off and we are now in the messy middle and when we don't nobody wants to be in the messy middle it's hard to be in the messy middle you know you're you're sitting there you're still working through it it's taking time you're not seeing immediate results that is a hard place to be you every single day, stick with it, don't give up, stay focused, stay consistent.
Where can people follow you and learn more about what you do, Laura? So if you want to follow me, you can obviously find me on LinkedIn. Look for Laura Kalil. You can also find me over at my website, which is brave by design.
net. I have a masterclass there. It's all about finding higher paying B2B clients. If that's something you're interested in, go check it out. And I am also rarely on Instagram. But my account there is I am brave by design. I'll put all those links in the show notes so they can connect with you and learn from you
Thank you again, Laura, for being on the show and helping us build the habit of courage to be more visible, make more money and do big things this year and beyond. Thank you. All right, everybody, that's another session wrapped keep putting yourself out there.
You have a brand to build a message to share and people to impact. We'll catch you next week. Take care.