Do You Secretly Hate Your Offer?

Some thoughts on business mindset.

The first in a mindet series. I think.

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

This was the headline of an email that my business coach sent to her entire list: Do You Secretly Hate Your Offer?

I laughed and started reading the email — and quickly realized that she was talking about me. Not just me theoretically, but me: an actual case study.

I was the client struggling to move past a revenue goal.

I was the client who would talk people out of joining my program.

I was the client who was paralyzed by thoughts of people trolling me about the high price of my program. (It had happened before, and I was secretly afraid it would happen again.)

My coach wrote:

Can you imagine sitting at your desk every day, these thoughts humming nonstop in the background of you brain…

You would hate your program, too!

Yes, I could indeed imagine it. This was my reality, and one of the reasons I sought out a business coach. I needed help to learn how to sell a higher-priced offer, but it turns out that the help I needed wasn’t so much about marketing strategy and tactics as it was about mindset.

Why was I so jealous of other people’s business models? Why was I so worried about right-sizing the pricing of my program? Why did I spend so much time being anxious about how my clients were doing, as if the results they experience in my program are my responsibility, not theirs?

Working to recognize the thoughts I have about my business model, my program, my sales calls, and my client’s experience has cracked open a whole new level of understanding for me — not just about my own business, but about yours too.

I’m Not The Only One Who Secretly Hates Their Offer

Today on a Business Accountability call with about 30 Author Accelerator Certified Book Coaches, I shared this story about being the business owner who hates her own program and asked if anyone had ever felt the same way. Almost everyone raised their hand.

Most of us hate our offers not because of anything about the offer itself. After all, my program is great! It delivers a fantastic learning experience, supports a wonderful and engaged community, and leads people to the desired outcome: they become well-trained book coaches who launch their businesses and learn how to run them effectively and efficiently.

We hate the offer because we are letting the voices of hate prevail inside our heads instead of approaching our work with kindness, compassion, and love.

How Do We Get Out Of This Toxic Cycle?

First of all, we catch ourselves saying all the negative things. We try to tune in. (Remember in Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about KFKD radio? That’s the channel…)

Then we work on tuning into a different frequency.

On that business call with my coaches, I asked us each to think about what we are doing as a book coach — not the services and packages we offer people, but the deep work that transforms writer’s lives.

I asked us each to fill out this phrase:

I transform people’s lives by ____________________

Here is what some of them said:

• I transform people's lives by giving them permission to embrace their unique "weirdness"

• I transform people’s lives by affirming the joy and the value in the types of stories they love and want to write.

• I transform people's lives by empowering people's creative courage to contribute their gifts to the world

• I transform people's lives by listening, believing, and encouraging them to keep (or start) writing, reflecting, and exploring their personal story.

• I transform people’s lives by helping them find the heart of their story and the confidence to move forward in their writing journey.

• I transform people’s lives by helping them go big in their creative work. Leave their comfort zone, enter the unknown.

• I transform people’s lives by helping them give legs to the story they love.

It was so beautiful to see all these statements, and even more than that, to see all the ❤️ s people were posting to each other’s comments.

Claire (my biz coach) asks us to do a version of this exercise before we get on a sales call with a potential client. I write myself Post-It Notes that look like this:

• My program is exactly what someone is looking for today.

• I have created something that will solve someone’s deepest pain today.

• I invite people into a container that offers them everything they need to succeed and some of them will.

• I transform people’s lives by giving them a path to money, meaning, and joy

In one memorable coaching session when Claire was trying to get me to tap into the feeling of invincibility that you have when you know you are doing the work you were meant to do, when you know you are more than capable of it, and when you know it is going to have an impact. It’s a feeling I had lost in all the “I secretly hate my program” noise.

She asked me to remember that feeling and then to put words to it.

I was struggling. I said invincible. Capable. Empowered. But all of those felt a little flat.

Claire said, “What about this? I couldn’t fuck this up if I tried.”

I felt my whole body snap into a different alignment. That was exactly it — the feeling that had gone missing for me in my business.

I put that on a Post-It note where I look at it every day and smile so hard.

Note: Sometimes The Hate IS About the Offer Itself

On that business accountability call, I coached someone who had tried the kind of coaching model that is most prevalent among book coaches — turn in X pages per deadline, host 2 deadlines per month — and it didn’t work for her. She hated it and was starting to resent her customers and her work. She thought she had to do things this way because “everyone” does things this way.

But once we started brainstorming what she would do if she were free to do anything (which she is!), she came up with ideas that excited her. Other coaches weighed in with ways that they were doing things differently to suit their schedules and their superpowers.

Suddenly, this coach could see a new way forward: a way towards a business she could love and get behind.

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