How to Turn Free Advice Into Paying Clients (Without Feeling Salesy)

GGGR 392

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Goodness, Generosity, Professionalism, Sales, Consulting, Confidence, Money, Asking, Value, Career,

Skills, Visibility, Strategy, Business, Success

SPEAKERS

Karen YankovichK

Karen Yankovich 00:00

Let me tell you about a conversation. This is a composite, okay? She’s not one woman. She’s

about like 40 women I’ve talked to in the last year or a couple years, and she’s probably you at

some point because she surely was me at some point too, right? So she gets on a call.

Someone found her, maybe through a referral, maybe they heard her on a podcast. Doesn’t

really matter, and the call is good. It’s good. She’s good. She’s answering real questions. She’s

sketching out a plan for this person live for free because that’s what we do, right? That’s what

you do. You’re helpful. At the end of the call, the other woman says the five words. You know

these five words. You’ve heard these five words. This was so helpful, and she says,

“So glad,

right? That’s it. That’s the whole exchange. Nobody talks about the money, right? Not not not

the one on either end of the conversation, right? The call ends. Everybody everybody feels

great, and the thread goes quiet. And three weeks later, she’s scrolling on LinkedIn, and there

it is-the announcement post. That same woman, the one she helped for free, is now working

with someone else. And here’s the part that stings. Here’s the part I need you to sit with. She

knows the person who got hired, and the person who got hired is not better at the work. She’s

worse at the work, right? She, her stuff isn’t as good as your stuff or my stuff, right? She’s just

better at the ask. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Welcome to Good Girls Get

Rich. I’m Karen Yankovich, and we’re going to fix this thing today because this thing is fixable,

and it’s so much more fixable than you think. All right, so let’s talk about what actually

happened on that call. Here’s what didn’t happen: she didn’t get outsold, she didn’t get

outworked. Nobody was smarter than her in that conversation. She was the smartest person on

the call, and that’s why the call happened in the first place. What happened is she paid a tax,

and if you’ve listened to the show, you know what I call this, right? The good girl tax. And if

you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you know that I don’t mean goodness is the

problem. Goodness is never the problem. Being generous, being helpful, actually caring

whether people succeed-that’s your asset. That’s huge. That’s amazing, and that’s the whole

reason people want to talk to you in the first place. The tax is what happened when all of that

got like wired up in your brain somewhere around age like seven to one rule: be helpful and

don’t make it weird. Don’t ask for things. Let them offer. If you’re good enough, they’ll notice,

and if they notice, they’ll offer, and if they don’t offer, well, maybe it wasn’t that valuable, and

this that rule works fine right up until the moment money is supposed to change hands, and

that’s why I keep talking about seen, known, and chosen on this show. You can get seen with

that rule intact. You can get known with that rule intact, and honestly, that rule kind of helps at

those stages because generous people are easy to like. It’s that last piece, and not enough

people are talking about that last piece. That’s why I am making it my business to talk about it.

Chosen is where the tax collector shows up. Chosen is the one rung where somebody has to

say a number out loud, and the rule that you’ve heard since age seven says you’re not allowed

to be the one who says it. So you wait for her to bring it up, but she’s waiting for you to bring it

up, and nobody brings it up. And then three weeks later, there’s the announcement post.

Listen, I hope this isn’t happening for you still now. Maybe it is. It certainly has happened to me

in the past, and maybe it’s hoping to happen to you in the past.K

Karen Yankovich 03:35

There’s so many ways around this, but I want to talk a little bit about why it costs You the most

like the twist here is, and this is the part that I really want the corporate women listening to

hear: the women sitting in the middle of a pivot, somebody building a consulting practice, or

going after the board seat. The more accomplished you are, the higher the tax. Think about it:

if you’re 25 and you give away an hour of your advice, you gave away an hour of advice. If

you’ve run a P and L and you’ve built a team and you’ve spent 20 years getting good at

something, that quick call is a strategy session that companies pay real money for. And every

free hour you give away is priced at your rate, so that tax scales with your value, which means

that most women paying the which means the woman paying the most are exactly the woman

who’ve earned the right to charge the most. That’s like the whole scam of this thing. And here’s

what makes me a little bit crazy: you’ve done the ask before. If you’ve had a corporate career,

you’ve asked for the budget, you’ve asked for a head count, you’ve walked into a room and

defended this number in front of people who wanted to say no, and you one you know how to

do this right, but those asks were on behalf of someone else, right? They were on behalf of the

company, on behalf of the team. The rule never had a problem with you fighting with

somebody else, right? The tax only kicks in when the number is attached to you. So let’s just be

so clear here: this is not a skills gap. Nobody listening to this needs sales training. You need

permission and you need a sentence. That’s the gap: permission and a sentence. So let me give

you like a picture to hold on to because I think that the ask has the wrong picture attached to it

in many of our heads. In our heads, the ask is a handout. It’s an interruption. It’s a sorry. I hate

to do this, but wrong picture. Wrong picture. Here’s the right one. You go to dinner at a

restaurant. The food is wonderful. The service is wonderful. You linger. It was amazing. You had

a great time. And at the end of the meal, the check comes. Is anybody offended by the check?

Has anyone in the history of restaurants gasped that that somebody brought a little folder to

their table. No, the check isn’t the interruption. The check is how the meal ends. Right? It was

expected before you sat down. Honestly, if a check never came, you’d be confused. You’d go

looking for someone. Right now, that call she did. She cooked the meal. She served the meal.

She cleared the table. She walked the woman to the door. She hugged her goodbye, and she

never brought her the check, and then she was hurt when the woman went and ate somewhere

that did bring her a check, right? Because here’s what I need you to understand about the

woman on the other side of that call: she wasn’t sitting there hoping the conversation stayed

free, right? She had a problem she was actively trying to spend money on. When you didn’t

bring her the check, you didn’t seem generous to her. You seemed unavailable. She read so

glad as this isn’t what I do professionally, so she went and found someone whose check arrived

on time. The ask is not you taking something. The ask is the check arriving at a table when

everyone else knew they were at a restaurant. So let’s talk about the sentence. Okay, get a pen

or or you know note the time on this and and come back to it whatever you do the moment is

the five words this was so helpful that moment is a door and it’s open for about 10 seconds and

so glad slams the door shut so here’s what comes out of your mouth instead ready I’m so glad

this is actually the exact work I do with clients. Can I tell you what that would look like for you?

That’s it. Let me take it apart for a second because every piece of that sentence is doing a job.

I’m so glad you’re not skipping the warmth.K

Karen Yankovich 07:11

You’re a warm person. Stay a warm person, right? This is the exact work I do with clients. That’s

the check landing on the table. No number yet, right? I haven’t not quoted a number yet. You’re

not quoting a price on the call. You’re just correcting the record that this thing you found

helpful is not a hobby. It’s a profession. Can I tell you what that might look like for you? That’s

an invitation. So she gets to say yes or no, which means you haven’t pitched anybody. You’ve

asked a question. Good girls are allowed to ask questions. We’re excellent at questions, right?

We just usually ask about everybody else. So say this sentence aloud right now. I’m serious. If

you’re in the car, say it out loud. I’m so glad this is actually the exact work I do with clients. Can

I show you what that would look like for you? Because as you as you say this out loud, it has to

be in your mouth once. You have to be able to say it, like say it in front of a mirror. You have to

be able to say it, like you say. Please pass this on because in the moment that seven-year-old

with the group with the rule that you got where you learned that rule is grabbing the wheel,

and whatever’s rehearsed comes out. So you have to practice this, practice it. Write it on a

piece of paper. Put it on your mirror. Practice it. Okay. Practice it. So maybe you’re listening

and doing some math, right? You’re thinking about a specific conversation that happened a few

weeks ago or maybe a few months ago, and you’re thinking,

“All right, Karen, but like the door

closed. Thanks so much for the tour of my regrets, right? The door did not close. A quiet thread

is not a dead thread. It’s just a unbilled one. You just haven’t sent the bill yet, right? So I’m

going to tell you a little bit about how we can maybe revive it, right? It’s the same move. It’s

just a little different, and it’s a maybe, right? We don’t know. Maybe they’ve already hired

somebody else, but this is this is revivable, right? In many cases. So here’s this sentence.

Here’s that sentence. Hey, you know what? I’ve been thinking about our conversation about

ABC. I realise I never mentioned that this is the exact work I do with clients. If ABC is still on

your plate, can I show you what working together on it would look like? So again, you’re not

apologising. You’re not saying sorry to bother you. You’re not saying I know it’s been a while.

You’re not explaining yourself. You’re not confessing anything. You’re just bringing a check to

the table where the meal already happened. She’s already hired somebody. Fine, she’ll tell you,

right? And you’ve lost nothing. And now she knows what you do for the next time and for

everyone else she refers. That message has no downside. The only downside is the silence. So

here’s your homework. That’s one move. Go find one conversation, an email, a LinkedIn

message, wherever you keep your good deeds, right? Wherever that lives for you. One

conversation from the last 90 days where somebody told you some version of this was so

helpful, and the money part never got named. You have one, I promise. Most of you have five,

and you know exactly where they live. Right, and send the revival message this week. One

message to one person, and then come on back and tell us. You can even come over to us at

LinkedInFromACommunity.com on Facebook. That’s where we hang out and chat about these

things, and we we will link it also in the show notes to that. And just tell us you sent it. You

don’t have to tell us what happened yet. Just that you sent it out because the sending is the

win. The reply is her job. The ask was yours. So here’s what I want you to take out of this

episode. The woman in that announcement post did not beat you. She just brought the check,

and every skill she has, you have, plus the one she doesn’t have. The only thing she stopped

paying is the good girl tax, right? She’s maybe worse at the work at the work itself, but she’s

better at the ask.K

Karen Yankovich 10:42

And from this moment forward, you are better at both. So if this episode’s hits something and

you’re realising the gap between where you are and the clients you want is not the work, it’s

the visibility, it’s the ask, it’s the confidence. This is literally what my free bar, the stage

masterclass, walks you through: how to get seen on stages that already exist, get known by the

right people, get chosen without ever once being gross about it. Go to karen

yankovich.com/masterclass and grab yourself a seat. It’s on demand. You can watch it at any

time, and there’s so much good stuff in there. I’m telling you, it’s the next step to this. I’m

Karen Yankovich. This is Good Girls Get Rich, and I will see you next week with another episode.