Every decision you make in your business is a quest.
In quests, you face challenges and unlock new levels of yourself, with support from your community. At each level of the experience - every time you outplay “the dragon”, you discover a new level of yourself.
Let’s talk about one of your big quests - deciding what the rates should be for your services/products. If we think of your quest as a board game or an app, the following comes to mind:
challenges,
levels,
scores/points,
badges,
leaderboards (competition) and
collaboration.
Challenges
If you have always worked for someone else, it may be difficult to convert your past salary into a service/product fee in your mind. Since your former employer likely underpaid and overworked you, you smuggle the dragon of fear into your business because you honestly do not know what to charge. You may lack confidence about your rates (thinking you are overcharging) or get frustrated with clients who don’t want to pay what you think your service/product is worth.
The challenge is to talk to your ideal client to understand what their needs and wants are. Then, decide if you can fill their needs or wants. Next, find out what they THINK your service/product, that fills their wants and needs, is worth.
Levels
In this quest, you level up from being uncomfortable about discussing prices, from lacking confidence in your pricing and from giving away valuable services/products out of fear of rejection - to knowing exactly what you should receive for your services/products.
Scores or points
You score points (symbolically) as you talk to prospective clients in focus groups, polls and most importantly, in one-to-one conversations. You score more points for listening carefully to what they say. This shows up in your tweaking your service/product offer itself (no matter how awesome it seemed) or by tweaking the marketing of your service/product to reflect what you heard your prospective clients say.
Badges (think Girl Scouts)
Badges, like levels and points, are symbolic here. If you are able to deliver a service/product that reflects the client’s needs and wants, that is priced at a rate that makes sense to your ideal client, you earn multiple badges:
applied researcher,
marketer and
lead sales person.
Leaderboards
Your competition inside this quest may be with other businesses providing services/products that compare to yours. However, your main competition, the fiercest dragon, is your fear of the sales process. The (symbolic) leaderboards should reflect that each new version of you is moving closer to where you want to be in confidence and in sales.
Collaboration
The process of leveling up involves talking to your people. Some of them will become clients. Some will become strategic partners. They all will help you work through your challenges and level up to where you want to be.
You may be able to level up on your own, with your pattern-reading and other skills, but you will go further faster, with input from your community.
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Your business is a series of stimulating quests.
The support you receive through coaching and consulting must respect YOUR quest experiences.
The support you receive must respect the challenges you face, respect the new levels you want to unlock for yourself and respect the community that is helping you unlock these levels.