In this episode you’ll learn that asking is neutral. You can ask for what you want in your consulting business. The benefits of writing your desires and how it can help you in your business.
In this 10 minute episode, we cover:
– Why to ask for more,
– What that can do for you, and
– The origins of happiness.
If you like this episode you are going to LOVE the next one where we go into the deep work, the exercises that actually help you ask for more.
TRANSCRIPT:
So hello, Welcome! This is the Asking For More podcast. Then I wanna introduce myself. My name is Mazarine Treyz and over the last several years during COVID, I’ve really come to understand that we are not asking for enough either from our jobs or from our relationships or from ourselves. And so the goal of this podcast is to help you find out what would be like to be comfortable and in your body in mouth past for a hundred percent of what you want. And today’s episode is going to be talking about specifically asking for more in your consulting business.
So last year I did a presentation on this or nonprofit is, and it was transformative for so many people. And one of the things that we start out with as consultants is asking ourselves, how much is my work really worth? And can I really charge what I wanna charge? If you don’t know how much to charge, that’s something to think about as well. One of the things you should be thinking about is that inflation made price of everything rise by 6% last year. So if you’re not asking for more, now, you really, really should be in your consulting business. There’s so many things I could say about it. One of the, that has helped me the most is to think about how do we actually start to feel like we’re able to ask. And the way we do that is to get connected with our desires. So every day I write out my desires and if you haven’t yet tried this, I encourage you to take five minutes and do it, take five minutes and ask yourself, what do I truly desire? Because a lot of times we don’t ask because we’re not connected to our desires, or we’re afraid what’s gonna happen if we ask and we don’t get it, we’re afraid we’re gonna ruin relationships.
We’re afraid that we’re going to basically destroy our lives. And it’s not true. It’s never true. Asking is neutral. Asking is neutral. People will have a choice to say yes or no. And if you try to make that choice for them, that’s really not respecting their economy or their freedom. You can absolutely ask for what you want and it’s their responsibility to say no, or yes. And if you’re worried that that means that they’re gonna think that you’re not gonna, if they say no, there’s one way to figure that out, ask them this, isn’t gonna change our relationship, but I wanna ask you, could you do this for me? Could you do that for me? Or would you give me this or that? So asking for more in your consulting business is tricky because other people are gonna be like, undercuting your prices.
So you think you don’t know how much other people charge. And so it’s up to you to figure out inside yourself, what do I feel my work is worth and how has it helped people and how has it helped them save money or make more money or have better working relationships that ended up being really good for the organization, whatever that is.
So you should already have those testimonials if you you should start collecting them. And if you know that you got results in a previous job, if you’re a new consultant and you don’t have any results yet in your consulting business, and look back to the results that you got in your previous job. So for the last 12 years, I haven’t always been very diligent about collecting testimonials, but I do have them now. And they’re fantastic. You can check out my testimonials page, if you wanna see what some good testimonials look like mazarinetreyz.com/testimonials, or you can look at my LinkedIn.
I also have quite a few testimonials there as well. And you can also look at my YouTube because I have video testimonials too. So think about who your favorite clients are and what they say about you, and then ask them to just write, you know, write a little something about you or write it for them and ask them to edit it that often really works well. But when you’re thinking about asking for more in your consulting business, it’s not just about money, it’s about asking your clients to step up and step up into, to their vision for their lives and not just play small anymore. So when you’re asking for more for yourself, you’re also asking them to be comfortable with getting uncomfortable with being like, oh, how does this ask feel in my body? Like, how do I, can I, can I see this person valuing himself more?
Can I also value myself more? So when you ask for more often brings up stuff in your clients too, it’s important though, to really acknowledge what your basic desires are like for me in a relationship the most, two important, most important things are physical intimacy and emotional intimacy. Those are the things that I’m fighting for. Those are the things that I want. And a lot of times we can get caught in what we don’t want. And so we’ll be mad that our clients aren’t paying us enough, tell them, or we’ll not have agreements are transparent and good for our business, and we need to make them, but we’re angry that we don’t have those yet. So a lot of what this podcast is about and what we’re gonna keep talking about is little simple things you can do today to ask for more.
So I already give you the exercise of writing and down your desires. Once you’ve done that, look them over. Is there something there that someone could do for you? That’s really not that big of a deal to ask for, like, maybe you wanna ask someone to drive you to the store. If you wanna ask somebody to go pick up something for you, maybe you wanna ask somebody to help you out in some way. There’s just one wonderful book called True Wealth, which talks about how in people’s lives. When they get a lot of money, it actually doesn’t make them happier. They think it will. And to a point it does, but then after that point, it doesn’t. And what really makes people happier is spending more time with friends and family and more time in intimacy and more time with doing their free time, whatever that is.
So you can ask for things that are not money, you can have a day where you don’t have meetings and you can just block that day off and say, this is my gift to myself. And you can ask your clients and not schedule meetings on that day, too. Right? That’s an ask. You can make, you can make another ask about simply being you know, just getting yourself more organized as a business and say, I’d like you to pay me this way. Don’t pay me in check, pay me this way or that way. Right. And have it be a process that is automated. So either you or your client has to think about it. You can ask other consultants for referrals. A lot of us hesitate to do this. A lot of us don’t do this. We can ask other consultants for not just referrals but referral fees.
So say, “Hey, I’ll give you 20% of this business”, whatever it is, we should be starting to think about this. As we move forward in 2022 and beyond because this is a way for us to all support each other more and make it lucrative for us to give each other business. So, I’m not good at everything. I’m sure you’re not good at everything. And one of the gifts you can give to your clients is knowing exactly what you’re really, really good at and what you’re not good at and referring them to other people that are good at that thing if they need it.
So when we talk about satisfaction, happiness, coming back to that again, if you have a community of folks that you’re around, that you love and you have enough free time and you have enough money, it almost doesn’t really matter if you have a hundred thousand or $200,000, for example. So if that’s the case then as a consultant, what does that tell you? Does that tell you that people are interested in you because of all the money you can make them, or are they interested in you because they like hanging out with you and they think that this is time well spent, no matter what you do.
I think it’s really the latter rather than the former. And so a lot of what being in businesses and being in workplaces and being in relationships is about being a good friend. And so being able to ask people for support when you need, it shows them that you trust them enough and that you’ll be there for them too. So a lot of things that we have chosen to do in under capitalism and modern society is be very individualistic under white supremacy. That’s one of the tenets of it and also very you know, be like, I don’t need anyone, you know, and that can also be a trauma response too. Right? So building a stronger community for yourself, for your clients, it’s one of the things that’s gonna sustain you. And one of the ways we do that is asking people to do stuff for us and asking them they need us to do stuff for them.
So you might say, Hey, I need people who send me referrals and you can just start talking with folks. You might say, I need recommendations for a good restaurant and ask folks, you can be like, I need, I need, I need, and people will be like, wow, she’s really asked for a lot that inspires me to ask for more as well. We often just don’t think about what we could ask for until we start writing down our desires. And then we start realizing, oh, there’s a lot of things that I want. There’s so many things that I want. And a lot of times what I can get is based on the community that I’m with. So that’s the exercise I’m going to leave you with today. Write down all of your desires and let me know how it goes.
