Your Clients Are Not Your Friends

Welcome to captivate and close. I'm Kinsey Machos, business consultant and marketing strategist. And I'm going to show you how to attract and enroll high paying claims, using my break through online marketing strategies, all without having to rely on complicated funnels, disingenuous clickbait, or spammy sales tactics. These are the messaging marketing and selling secrets that virtually no one is talking about. So let's dive in.

Hey, you welcome back to another episode of captivating clothes. So good to be here with you, you might notice that my audio is a little bit different. So just hang with me, I'm actually recording off of my phone. So I'm not in my normal recording studio, and I'm traveling. And this message could have waited until I got back. But I wanted to deliverthis to you, while it's heavy on my heart, and not in a bad way like it is flowing out of me. Because it's a message that I needed to hear much earlier on in in my coaching journey. And it's also a message I need to continue to hear and be reminded of and so.

And I forget on that note, I forget how powerful it is to remind myself of this. So what I want to talk about, and I don't even know what I'm going to name this episode. But what I want to talk about is this idea of being friends with your clients. And the difference between a space where people grow, and also a space where people don't grow.

So most of my 2021 So at the time of this recording, it's quarter two of 2022. And the majority of my year last year was spent in some, not some, a lot of unawareness to my lack of boundaries. Now, I always are I thought that I had recovered from many decades worth of people pleasing, like this idea of becoming a chameleon, right in scenarios where I don't want to make other people feel bad. I don't want to make other people feel small, I want to fit in, I don't want to stand out, I don't want to hurt people's feelings. The idea of being liked avoiding conflict, all of these scenarios that do initially create some sort of discomfort, I thought I had sort of moved away from that, when I stepped out of the corporate space because I was tired of feeling that way. I was tired of blending in I was tired of hiding myself I was tired of, of not speaking up. And when I became an entrepreneur, I felt sort of this rebirth of who I was and who I was becoming. So this idea of a recovering people pleaser was sort of something like a label that I wore, and didn't really understand that there was so much more that had to be uncovered. And just like any other limiting belief or insecurity that you've struggled with, it is never going to be a thing that is gone forever, or something that is resolved forever.

There is always sort of that inner child within us or sort of these things that will resurface at different levels of our business in different phases of our lives in different seasons of our journey. And so it was naive of me to think that I was done right with the people pleasing when in fact, it just sort of came back full circle, and looked and felt very differently. And so I didn't, I wasn't able to clue in into what was happening. But what I realized over the evolution of my business last year was and this, you know, the results of what had occurred were really ugly and really painful. And I realized that that was from this fear of not being liked by my clients and not wanting to ruffle the feathers and not wanting to say something that they might disagree with, or not really saying what they actually need to hear and not what they want to hear. And it's not that I was intentionally doing those things or not doing those things.

It was just sort of this evolution of a fear building within me that I didn't have awareness to yet. Right. But then what happened was there was things that were showing up there were things that happening that were happening, that at first I was like, What is going on? Why are these things happening? And I realized it was connected to all these patterns and behaviors that I had created, right in the partnerships with my clients. And I'm not this is not broadly right. This is just sort of like, patterns here and there. And I was reminded, right, so I'm at my mastermind, I'm in Nashville. And we have this really beautiful conversation about speaking your truth. And it's creating safety and trust and belonging in your client communities. And this idea of you modeling what it's like to write, trust yourself, speak your truth, which gives other people their permission to do their same, do the same. But what came up for me, right, is this idea of, well, how do you speak your truth, but also not hurt people's feelings?

And it goes back to right, I want to do this thing, or I want to say this thing. But then right, that fear pops up in what if? And that's where we really have to catch ourselves. And even as I was sort of asking myself that question, I realized that some of those beliefs hadn't fully been resolved, right, just like they never fully resolved, but I hadn't really addressed them in the way that it was presenting itself this week. And what I realized was that, speaking your truth is good enough. And when I when, because when I am speaking my truth, it's out of love and service. And it may not be what people want to hear. But I know that out of love and service is what people need.

And from the heart, right, if I know that I'm operating from that space of love and service, even if right, it's interpreted wrong, or maybe it hurts people's feelings. I know at the end of the day that I did it out of love and service. And that is my truth. And what happens though, is that if we start to mold, our coaching practices, mold, our coaching programs, with the belief or the fear that I want to be liked by my clients, you start to develop friendships or create friend zones, where you're just equal. And now I'm not saying right, there are there are some of my clients that I am, I have developed deeper relationships with, but I play two parts, right? It's like, am I a friend right now? Or am I a coach, and those are going to be very different personas, right, based on the circumstance that I'm in. But if you think about scalability, and speaking about generally, right, if you have, if you are, you know, serving one to many, especially in a group experience, or you're scaling your, your offer with volumes of people, right, you really have to show up as that leader, and learn how to trust yourself enough to know that you are speaking your truth, and you are serving that client at your highest level by saying right and serving them in what they need, not necessarily what they want. And when you operate, though, from friendship, or likability, that's not what creates growth.

That's not what creates contrast, and you are not being paid or hired, right? To be friends with your clients. And while sometimes that might feel like that's what they want, we have to remind them that that's not what they mean, there's a certain thing in their life or business that they're trying to resolve that they're trying to create. And they want you to help them get that and sometimes that means facing their own demons facing their own fears, doing things that are uncomfortable saying no when you need to creating boundaries, putting parameters in place, so that they can thrive. But if you start to dip back into I don't want to be too big, I don't want to be too powerful, what if they don't like the then you've lost that environment for them to achieve their success? And I think this is important because again, nobody really had that conversation with me. Nobody really prepared me for sort of the duality of you know, you are a human you you obviously for me, especially like I like to have deeper connections with people. My friend circle is obviously really really small but like on the outer layer of that I do tend to connect emotionally like you know, with people, but I have to really make sure right when I step up to the coach seat or the mentor, see, right, I'm doing what's right by them by right, speaking the truth. And sometimes it can be uncomfortable for you have to start stepping into that.

And sometimes it will be uncomfortable for the both of you. But again, it's what's right by the client. It's what's right for you and your message, and it gets a little gray. When you start to when you worry about right likability not ruffling feathers like not creating that conflict. So if you believe that you are speaking your truth, you are doing what's right by the client, and you are operating out of love and service, you cannot go wrong. And you have to believe at the end of the day that you are doing the right thing. And so just a reminder, right? That sometimes being that mentor sometimes being that coach for that person, it may mean that there is conflict, but how can you go back to right safety, trust and belonging? How can you create that space for them by also saying that this may be uncomfortable for you. And sometimes it may not be what you want to hear or do. But I am, this is why you hired me, hired me to shortcut your path, get faster, bigger, better results, which requires a new level of you. And you have to hold that space for them to step into that. So I hope this is encouraging to you. And I know this is so common, right of like I this friendship zone versus meant mentor client zone like, yes, you can have both.

But make sure you have a clear delineation. And especially if you are scaling your coaching programs, and you have volumes of people, you really do have to maintain those parameters, and set up an environment where people thrive, grow, succeed, right, which means being challenged, and confronted, and being pushed in a very, very good way, right? Because that's what they want. That's what they need. So I hope this message was encouraging to you or encouraging for you today, if you loved it, I would love for you to just take a snap snapshot of it, share it on Instagram, and tag me and just connect with me over there. I think that there's so much that I've learned in relation to boundaries, lack of them, right, not enough of them, how to create them. And I want to continue to share that here. But this was really fresh, because we've been talking a lot about this. And I noticed even paying attention to how I feel and what comes up for me when we have those conversations. And I imagine if I'm feeling it, you might be feeling it too. So I just want to honor you and I'm just so grateful for you and I hope you have such a great week.