How to Know Your Value + Attract Ideal Clients (As a New Life Coach)

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Have you thought lately, that you’d like to *know your value* in a deeper, more confident way?

You’re not alone!  Because along with everything you must learn as a new life coach, you want to get a handle on all of the benefits coaching clients gain from working with you. That means you must know your value.

If this is you, I’m so glad you’re here because this post shares an amazing, simple exercise you can use to clarify your value for yourself. You’ll also find questions you can journal on, so that you get a complete picture of how your clients benefit from working with you.

I’m excited to share this with you, because so many life and health coaches struggle to confidently quote pricing to potential clients that represents their complete value.

I hear this question all the time, “How do I get a handle on my value?” Especially from women who are starting a new coaching business, and not yet practiced at explaining their value to potential clients.

The truth is, I struggled with understanding my own value when first starting out. It wasn’t until after I did my own inner work on everything I bring to the table for clients, that I could confidently state my fees to prospects.

Here’s the strategy that worked for me and many others, so you can better know your value:

1. Acknowledging the value your work brings to clients is crucial so you can know your value
2. Clarifying your value starts with your mindset
3. When you internalize all of your skills, talents, experiences + passions–you’ll have clarity on the depth of your value
4. Clarity leads to confidence

Once you know your value and you’re confident in it, you’ll naturally attract more of the kinds of clients who are ready for the kinds of outcomes your programs make possible.

When it comes to earning your worth as an entrepreneur, you must first understand how your ideal clients benefit from working with you. And in EVERY way they benefit.

I love this quote from Mika Brzezinski because it sums up the importance for women to know their worth. Mika is a cable news co-host, author, and creator of the “Know Your Value” conferences.

Knowing your value means owning your success. Owning your success means acknowledging your achievements. By acknowledging achievements you build confidence.

— Mika Brzezinski, Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth

Let’s unpack how to get clarity about your worth, and know your value, from both your viewpoint and your clients’ perspective, shall we?

Once you know your value, you can do 3 things more easily:

1. Develop a healthy mindset about promoting your services
2. Confidently charge the fees you desire and deserve
3. Attract more of your ideal clients because they resonate with the kinds of outcomes you share

Note: This post is excerpted from my Amazon #1 Bestseller, She Markets, A Guide for Women Entrepreneurs. You can find book here: https://www.amazon.com/She-Markets-Guide-Women-Entrepreneurs/dp/0990825299/   

You must include this in the value you bring to clients

You deserve to be paid what you’re worth for a thousand reasons. But mainly because your talent, experience, life lessons, and hard-won expertise help clients solve problems. Accomplish goals. Achieve breakthroughs.

Your programs, services, and products help clients be the best version of themselves. Don’t they?

But how do you deeply tap into your value? How do you understand all the ways your clients benefit from working with you? It’s vital that you answer this key question.

Here are three exercises (tools) you can use to deepen and clarify your understanding about the value you bring to clients.

This list is key so you can know your value

In this exercise, you’re reminding yourself about the depth and breadth of your capabilities and achievements. Let’s start with an inventory.

Compile four lists that represent all the richness of your experiences, skills, and the special genius you possess. It’s an easy way to summarize all you offer to your clients.

Know Your Value Exercise:

We’ll look at your passions, talents, skills, and life experiences. You’ll make 4 separate lists:

1.      Your passions.

2.      Your talents.

3.      Your skills.

4.     Your life experiences.

 1) Your passions are things, pastimes, people, and causes you love. These are where you spend time that fulfills and rejuvenates you.

Passions are your family, friends, causes you support, as well as your guilty pleasures.

Include your hobbies, volunteering, yoga, reading, bicycling, hiking, creating anything, cooking, building things, or running.

2) Your talents are abilities that come naturally to you. You may be an amazing artist, fabulous writer, mesmerizing speaker, scrumptious pastry maker, legendary strategist, motivating health coach, or memorable storyteller.

Maybe you’re such an empathetic listener, everyone wants time with you when they’re grappling with a big issue.

Talents are parts of your expertise you didn’t have to work very hard to learn. You may have been a natural at organizing, creating, or something else from a young age.

Tip: To know your value with clarity, think about things you’ve done so well, for so long, you don’t even recall learning them.

If you find your talents and passions overlap, include each one in both lists.

The purpose of this exercise is to remind yourself of everything you’ve refined, learned, practiced, and mastered. It’s fine to have duplicates!

3) Skills are capabilities you learned in school, professional training, or taught yourself. These can range from blogging, coaching, researching, designing, selling, managing projects, leading teams, financial advising, teaching, troubleshooting, public speaking, and more.

I hope you’re having several I-forgot-I’m-good-at-this moments!

4) Your life experiences include transformational events that have shaped who you are today. How these events impacted you may be why you can now help others recover from and resolve similar challenges.

• List milestones from childhood, your education, having children, corporate career, or other events.
  Include events that occurred either within or outside of your control.
• These know your value exercises are for you. You needn’t share it with anyone unless you wish to.

Getting it all down in writing is a gift you give yourself. It’s a way to acknowledge how much you’ve achieved.

 

To know your value, revisit your inventory often

Examine your four lists from time to time. As you define and redefine your value remind yourself often how many gifts you have to share.

It’s sometimes easy to forget just how far you’ve come and how much you know.

If you’re not currently earning what you know you’re worth, it can be even easier to lose sight of the complete value your clients experience when they work with you.

Another reason it’s easy to lose sight of your value is because your particular talent is so darn easy for you. Your talents, skills, and capabilities are second nature to you, right?

As women, it’s common for us to forget that not everyone’s as skilled as we are when it comes to our specific expertise.

Don’t lose sight of capabilities that make you unique. Your clients benefit from the sum of all of your gifts!

Remind yourself of how your clients did this

When clients implement your training, follow your recommendations, and solve long-standing problems, their lives improve. Don’t they?

Next, write out the specifics that clients shared with you about how they benefited after working with you. List all the incredible ways your successful clients have improved their health, careers, relationships, businesses, or finances—however you help people. Always remind yourself how your work was positive for other parts of their lives.

7 Questions to uncover all the benefits your clients experienced

1. Did you save them time, money, frustration, and stress? How much?
   • What did the time, money, and less stress mean to their lives?
   • Their relationships? Their work?
2. If they got unstuck after using your products and services, what else did that make possible?
3. How did they explain what the resolution meant to them?
   • Regardless of the type of work you do, what benefits did they experience?
   • Both personally and professionally?
4. How specifically did your clients describe their outcomes?
5. What were their exact words?
6. How did they explain the changes they experienced by following your recommendations?
7. What kinds of improvements did they report after implementing your programs?

Exercise:

Write down, in their own words, how clients felt about the changes you helped them achieve. Review messages, letters and conversations clients have sent you to uncover their comments.

Tip: Use your dream clients’ exact words in your marketing content and conversations.

To know your value, is also about the big picture

In addition to doing this deep, thoughtful work for yourself, here’s a big-picture reason to strengthen your understanding of your value.

Women own 36% of all U.S. privately-held businesses and men own 51%.

Women are catching up. Yay women! That’s the good news. Now for the not so great news.

Frustratingly, women-owned businesses account for a paltry 12% of private business sales revenue.

While owning slightly more than half of private U.S. businesses, men ring up a whopping 79% of total sales.

Source: Pew Research 

Don’t settle for less money than you know your expertise is worth because you are an entrepreneur. You started your business so you could serve the people you’re meant to serve.

You see this all the time. Your clients save time and money, eliminate stress and frustration after working with you. They accomplish big dreams or overcome enormous obstacles that were blocking them from better lives.

However you help people, it’s key to remind yourself of specifically how many different ways their life is better after they work with you.

Final Thoughts

Leaders who are committed to empowering women entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants, constantly repeat this mantra: Step into your value. Own your value.

After you’ve shored up your understanding of how you help your clients, your work isn’t done.

You want to take the next step. Get grounded in, comfortable with, and practiced about explaining exactly how clients benefit from working with you. Or from participating in your programs, classes, and coaching  services. It’s the cornerstone to ‘owning’ your value.

Envision how your clients’ lives improved—on all levels—after they worked with you. Keep these facts close to your heart and on your mind at all times when marketing your coaching services.

Think about the people waiting for you to lead and inspire them.

Your clients need you! There are people out there who can only learn from you. For your ‘tribe’ of future clients, you’re the best expert to help them get unstuck, and to get where they want to go.

You owe it to yourself and to your future clients to get out there. Make it easy for them to find you.

Be Unstoppable!

~ Cynthia

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