How to Get Over Self-Sabotage and Increase Your Take Home Pay by 20% with Claire Pelletreau
Episode 389: Show Notes
Today on the podcast our guest is Claire Pelletreau, a Facebook ads and conversion optimization expert. Her genius involves brainstorming, strategizing, training and overseeing aspects of ad spend for her clients – but that’s not what we’re picking her brain for today. We hear her take on what it means to show up in your business and focus on things that increase profits. We also talk about the nagging sense that you’re not growing as you ought to in your business and those things that lead to self-sabotage. If you’ve ever suffered from imposter syndrome, this episode offers you loads of questions and points of consideration that will help you to move past those gnarly mindsets.
Decisions that Prevent You From Making Money
In the early days, Claire was making many mistakes. She launched a course that no one was asking for and charged $25 for it, thinking that it was going to be a real money maker. What she offered wasn’t something that people would likely spend money on, yet she did a full launch and had all the hopes for this project. While she made $2,000, it was not keeping the lights on for her business – it simply wasn’t bringing in enough revenue. Before designing and offering a course, it’s important to think about its appeal to people: do they care enough about this topic to learn more about it, or would they rather hire something to solve the problem for them? Dry topics like bookkeeping, for example, are not the kind of thing your average person is interested in; they would likely get someone else to do their bookkeeping for them. Other mistakes Claire made were launching a course once and never again and also undercharging for far too long. When she finally raised her rates, her profits soared.
Looking for Problems and its Impact on Self-Confidence
At some point, Claire doubted much about her business and started comparing herself with other businesses. She saw them doing impressive public launches and being successful and wondered what she was doing wrong. So, she had a desire to pinpoint the one big problem in her business and all along it was a number of different factors that prevented her from achieving success. She started looking for the problem in herself, thinking perhaps she was the problem. This did a number on her self-confidence. Some of the other problems included never asking for a sale and then putting too much pressure on herself during launches. So what did she do about it? She began working with Sarah Ashman on her branding to figure out exactly who she was, who she’s talking to and what makes her different. When it comes to branding, it’s important for you to highlight who you are for other people in the context of solving a problem they have.
The Positive Spin-offs of Getting Your Branding Down
Before she even started working with a branding consultant, someone in her mastermind suggested she start pretending that she was the best. What would it look like if you began acting like the best? And when she made this shift, she started giving herself a lot more credit for her brain and abilities, and this also started showing up in her branding. She adopted this attitude when she would have sales calls – telling people she was one of the best ad consultants in the world. And the work streamed in! She was no longer hesitant about herself or her product and boldly shared her success stories and results. Collecting and sharing things like testimonials and screenshots of shout-outs are super helpful in building the credibility of your business. Also, don’t be afraid of asking for these kinds of write-ups, even just a follow-up email asking them for feedback on your offering. You must learn not to take criticism personally and to separate your self-worth from your business.
What You Find Your Worth In
For some personality types, it’s difficult to find worth outside of themselves. They absolutely need to feel proud of what they’ve done in order to feel that sense of worth. For these people, the measure should always be whether they are happy with what they’ve done at that point – regardless of whether it’s their best work ever or not. As long as you feel content with it at that moment. People find worth in different things: for some, it’s reaching those sales goals, making lots of money, or even being productive. But there’s also an important balance to maintain: having your own business is hard work and there are always items on the to-do-list, but sometimes you need to take a break.
Other Shifts Happening that Increased Revenue and Profit
When Claire finally showed up, she also brought her podcast back because for her it was where she truly shined. Before, her podcast didn’t make her any money so she threw it out, but the only reason it was not contributing to her revenue was that she never spoke about herself or promoted her work and expertise – big mistake! So, she introduced a few things and started making money off the podcast. In fact, there is a way of monetizing almost anything you do.
When we talk about growing profit, it’s after we have already paid ourselves. We make sure we pay ourselves decent salaries, and whatever is left over is the profit we can then choose to do different things with. Profit can allow you to pay yourself more or invest in more team members, for example. What you do with your profit also depends on how you reinvest in your business and how it’s set up legally. Profit can also be put toward a cash cushion, which is just that bit of backup that takes a load of pressure off. Hiring too early can make a huge dent in your profit. Claire delayed hiring new people for this exact reason, it’s only much later that she started getting others on board to help her.
Some Perspective on What Success Looks Like and Plans for 2020
There is this perception that online businesses should double or quadruple in X amount of time, but this is simply not realistic. Most businesses take years to get established, and online ones are no different. So, even if Claire wasn’t too happy with her sales all the time, she was still doing well compared to many others in “real jobs”. Many well-established businesses that have many people working for them are making a small profit compared to some of the upcoming online businesses. Just because they’ve been around for a long time by no means indicates they are necessarily growing or making huge profits. Claire’s plans for the new year involve doing webinars once a month and ramping up the traffic to her various funnels. She also wants to show up more in other people’s audiences.
Quote This
If you just keep everything to yourself, no one has any idea you can help them tremendously with their business.
—Claire Pelletreau
Highlights
Decisions that Prevent You From Making Money. [0:04:31.1]
Looking for Problems and its Impact on Self-Confidence. [0:11:15.1]
The Positive Spin-offs of Getting Your Branding Down. [0:16:11.1]
What You Find Your Worth In. [0:25:10.1]
Other Shifts Happening that Increased Revenue and Profit. [0:28:53.1]
Some Perspective on What Success Looks Like and Plans for 2020. [0:38:21.1]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Claire Pelletreau
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Claire Pelletreau is a Facebook ads and conversion optimization expert. She runs ads for her clients and teaches her students how to run successful ad campaigns for their clients. In addition, she hosts a podcast called The Get Paid Podcast, where she gets into the details with prominent online entrepreneurs to find out exactly what it takes to run their businesses online.
KEY TOPICS
Identifying problems, Self-worth, Branding, Revenue, Profit, Success
