Though I’m a natural blonde, I have uncharacteristically intense eyebrows for my coloring. After a few weeks without maintenance they start to look like caterpillars. And I start to mistake myself for Groucho Marks when I catch my reflection quickly. Yesterday I’d had enough and I booked myself a last minute appointment with my bad-ass hair stylist who also is a waxing queen. She has a haircut just like Pink, she goes to raves, and just generally doesn’t take any shit from anyone. As I was lying in her chair grimacing every time she swiftly pulled a waxy strip away from my face, I decided to distract myself by talking to her about my wedding.
I told her I’d been dreaming of 1930′s style finger-waves. She stopped me in the middle of my vintage bridal ramblings to make it clear that she doesn’t know how to do finger waves. She emphatically added that wedding hair is NOT her thing. She wanted to be 100% clear that she was not the woman I was looking for to make my nuptial do come true. And, as I was leaving the salon, she introduced me to the woman who LOVES to do bridal hair to make sure I was in good hands.
THE POWER OF A CLEAR NO
Can I tell you something? I trusted her fifty million times more as a result of her mega clarity around what she’s not only not good at, but not even interested in delivering.I’m going to send her more referrals and enjoy my cuts and colors even more than I did before because of her honesty and clarity.
Here’s what I learned yesterday:
When you’re clear and honest about what you don’t offer, your customers will trust you more.
How many times have you bent yourself into a tangled pretzel trying to do something for a customer that you either: a) didn’t know how to do b) weren’t good at c) didn’t like doing, or d) all of the above.
I can answer that I’ve done all of those things more times than I’m proud of.
Recently I got asked to do a speaking gig for an audience of mostly corporate women. You know what? I’ve never worked in a corporate setting. My ideas around money and freedom are kind of outside the box. I pondered and then I said no because I’m not interested in setting foot inside that particular box. (There’s nothing wrong with working in a corporation. There are a lot of great ones. It’s just not my thing.)
It felt soooo good to turn down my full speaking fee out of clarity because I know what I don’t do.
One of the mistakes that dims the light of enthusiastic business owners everywhere is trying to be everyone to everybody. (And, by the way, that pretty much dims the light of all humans too.)
My wish is for us to all spend just as much time to figure out what we don’t do as what we do do.
@katenorthrup (Click to Tweet!)
START HERE TO GET CLEAR
In fact, if you’re feeling lost about your purpose, start here:
- List what you’re not good at.
- List what you don’t like to do.
- List what you have no interest in learning how to do or how to be good at.
Holy clarity.
Trying to be who you’re not, in business, or in life, will kill your progress, not to mention your spirit.
Being exactly who we are in a purposeful way is but one of the key strategies for being a profitable business owner (and a self-actualized human. Cool how it works out that way, right?)
Kate Northrup created financial freedom for herself at the age of twenty-eight through building a team of more than 1,000 wellness entrepreneurs in the network marketing industry. Her philosophy is that if you free yourself financially, you can be fully present to your purpose on the planet. She is also the author of Money: A Love Story, Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want (Hay House, 2013). Kate and her work have been featured on The Today Show, Yahoo! Finance, The Huffington Post, Refinery29.com, and in Glamour, Red, Prima Magazine, Soul & Spirit, and more. She continues to mentor entrepreneurs in creating financial freedom. Find out more and take her free quiz to find out what your relationship with money says about you at katenorthrup.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Image courtesy of Seth Sawyers.
