She doubled her income by working on her self-worth with Lauren Fraser

Having a low sense of self-worth can play out in lots of different ways in your business. Some examples are working with clients who aren’t your dream clients, not charging your worth, and not showing up in your marketing the way that you know you should. In today’s episode, I chat to Lauren from LMF Marketing about how she has been able to work on her self-worth and how it has massively improved her bottom line. Make sure you stick around, this episode is a cracker.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact.

Today’s episode of the podcast is brought to you by the Profit Power Week. This experience is brought to you by me to give you an insight of what it is like inside my high ticket Profit Masters Mastermind. Over one week, I’ll be allowing you on the inside to see what it is like. You will have two free live trainings with me as well as a week long access to Voxer, a voice and text messaging app, to ask me and other members inside the experience any questions or to share any challenges that you are going through in your business. The best thing about the Profit Power Week, it’s free. If you are a service based business making a minimum of six figures a year turnover in your business make sure you find out about the Profit Power Week by clicking on the link in the show notes for today’s episode. If it’s the right fit, I would love to welcome you inside.

CLARE:

Lauren, it’s so wonderful to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

LAUREN:

Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.

CLARE:

Now, Lauren is one of my fabulous Masterminders and we’re going to be diving into talking about self-worth today, which is a fantastic topic to be diving into. But before we do that, Lauren, can you do a quick intro to who you are and how you help people?

LAUREN:

Yes, certainly. So I have my digital agency, LMF Marketing, which is now four years old, which is really exciting. We’re a multi-channel marketing agency, so we support established businesses across social media, Google marketing, email marketing, and SEO, and working in mainly businesses in the health, wellness, and lifestyle space, which is really exciting.

CLARE:

Fantastic. Now, even when you reached out to me, you already had a thriving business. So what made you decide to jump into a Mastermind and to take your business to the next level?

Why Lauren joined the Mastermind to level-up her business

LAUREN:

Yeah, good question. As you know, I’ve been following along with you pretty much since I started my business and always knew I wanted to work with you, but also knew I wasn’t ready. So there was a lot of things I had to work on, get my business to that six figure level, but I got there and it was going really well and I plateaued and I wasn’t seeing further growth so I knew things had to be shaken up a little bit, and I knew I was ready to come and see you to get that help.

CLARE:

Wonderful. I was so glad that you jumped into the Mastermind and it’s one of those funny things that sometimes we don’t even really know what we’re going to be expecting when we leap into an experience or a program like this. So one of the things that we have spoken about and worked on a lot inside the Mastermind is self-worth. So was this an area that you were aware was something that you struggled with at all?

LAUREN:

Yeah, but I think it probably wasn’t until jumping into the Mastermind with you that I realised how relevant it was to business. Because as you make the analogy many times over money and love are very similar and so I was already aware of my low self-worth patterns in relationships and dating, and that was something I was working on. But it wasn’t until I was working with you that I was having those aha moments of like, “Oh my God, this is also showing up in my business and attracting the wealth that I want and charging my worth,” et cetera. I didn’t realise it applied to business as much as it does.

CLARE:

I love that. Yeah, and it’s funny, sometimes we don’t even realise. I know I’ve shared inside the Mastermind that I went through a period of really low self-worth about 18 months ago, and even from the outside, looking in, people might not have even known. Sometimes it’s really, really hard to articulate what it means, why you’re feeling the way that you’re feeling, but you’re 100% right. It translates into so many different areas of your life. It translates into relationships and it definitely translates into our business. And the way that it plays out, like you said, is that it can play out in us working with people that are not aligned, perhaps settling for less than dream clients, not charging your worth, not showing up in your marketing the way that you should be because you feel a bit nervous about how people are going to judge you. You might think I want to really put myself out there, but you think, are people going to judge me? So what are some of the specific ways, I know you mentioned you touched on pricing, were there any other ways that it was playing out in your own business?

LAUREN:

Oh, definitely, lots of free work. And I remember that was one of the first things I raised with you when we got started in the Mastermind, because I was just stretched so thin across client projects and it was because I was saying yes, yes to helping going above and beyond. And I’m all for great customer service, but I was doing so much free work that was out of scope to the projects that it was burning me out quite significantly. And it was something I was aware of, but didn’t really know how to shift either because it was just that people pleasing that I’ve got to go above and beyond to be valued or feel that I have worth. So that was a big one that played out.

CLARE:

And a big way that I saw that playing out in your business was that you were so busy doing all of these things for other people that they weren’t you for that you weren’t getting the opportunity to get out and promote your own business, and you were really struggling with the doing, doing, doing that you weren’t actually able to stand back and say, “Well, how am I putting myself out there? How am I attracting more of my dream clients?” So looking back, why do you think that you were doing that?

LAUREN:

Oh, definitely, it came from a place of insecurity around it. And I think especially starting the business and maybe also being in the marketing space, there is no set strategy. It’s not like you do this and you’re going to be successful. It’s trial and error. You build your experience and you get better over time. So I think there was a lot of insecurity around, “Oh, well, I’m fresh into this. I don’t have enough experience. I haven’t been in the industry for 10 plus years. So I really wanted to prove to clients I think that I was experienced, that I could help. And yeah, if campaigns didn’t go as well as expected or we didn’t get the desired results. Then I was, “Oh, I’ve got to go above and beyond and fix their website issues for them for free or something,” which is no easy or short task.

CLARE:

Oh, I have seen this so much. I work with lots of people in the digital marketing space and they feel exactly the same, this massive sense of responsibility for outcomes, and the reality is that you can’t ever predict what’s going to happen. I mean, obviously, great marketers like yourself have strategies and tools that have worked for clients in the past and that seem like they will go well. But sometimes things for whatever reason just don’t come together. And like you said, that’s why, in the marketing place, it really is sometimes it means having to revisit things, rejig things for every different business, every different industry. And I mean, I experience exactly the same thing in coaching. You can pick up someone’s exact same strategy and put it into a different business and for whatever reason it doesn’t resonate with their audience or their business or perhaps the person executing it doesn’t have the same energy behind it. And for you especially there’s so many variable things, like you said, the website, all the other different elements of people’s marketing, including outside of what you are responsible for, their branding, their photography, all of those things. So I can totally appreciate why people feel that. But, at the end of the day, when you don’t have that confidence around it, it’s easy to fall into the trap of going, “Well, I’m going to do all this other stuff so that they get their results.”

LAUREN:

Yes, doing way more than you should. But I think it does come with experience and it’s something you always said of looking for that proof of success, and then once you that you’re like, “Oh, actually, I am really good at what I do. Oh, okay, I don’t have to go above and beyond. Actually, that was out of my control.

CLARE:

Yeah.

LAUREN:

And then you really build that confidence, which is necessary.

CLARE:

Yeah, 100%. And looking at it from the outside, to me, when I think about going above and beyond, you still go above and beyond for your clients. It’s just drawing boundaries around, well, actually that’s outside the scope. And I strongly believe that you can deliver excellent customer service without going and giving people things that they haven’t paid you for essentially.

LAUREN:

Oh yeah. And also one of the big benefits of being in the Mastermind was connecting with the other women because, obviously, having a lawyer in there and her input of like, “Actually, you don’t want to go out of scope because you do open yourself up to risk.” And so I was like, “Oh, okay. Not only am I burning myself out by going above and beyond, but I shouldn’t be doing it from a legal standpoint either.” So that helped to reinforce how important it is to set boundaries and be charging. And so it’s nice now. When I do go above and beyond, it’s like, “I can do that, but it’s going to be this amount.”

CLARE:

I love that. I love it. So let’s dive into that a little bit more. So if someone’s listening and they’re going, “Oh my gosh, that’s me. Do it all the time,” what are some of the strategies that we spoke about to help you to step from where you were to a space where you are now, where you do have much stronger boundaries around what’s in and out of scope?

The self-care strategies Lauren implemented into her business

LAUREN:

So, firstly, it was getting really clear on the work I want to be doing, and that was just for my own sake, because obviously when you are putting a lot of attention into work, you don’t like doing. I think it just exacerbates that burnout and disconnect with the business. So I got really clear on that first and saying, “Okay, no, we’re not going to do that work. You’ve got to go elsewhere, such as building websites.” We don’t do website development. I don’t want to. There’s amazing people out there. So it was getting really clear on the work we want to be doing. But then I did so much journaling around it to try and dig into, “Okay, why am I saying yes? Where does this come from? Why do I have to please clients 150%?” And from that, it was like, okay, on all fronts, there’s some work to be done and making space for myself to do that.

So last year was a big year of self-care. Really, when things were getting overwhelming or burning out, it was stepping back and being like, “Okay, where is this coming from? I’m doing this to myself. I’m in charge of my business, my life. No one is forcing me to do this. It’s just me.” So yeah, definitely last year diving into the journaling, connecting with others in the space, and actually talking about it, because as you know with the Mastermind, everyone’s experiencing very similar things and when you bring that up and you talk about, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, let’s step into our power. Why do we keep doing this?” And coming up with different strategies from different experiences as well. So that was definitely a big help, and that’s why I think group settings are so powerful for this work as well.

And yeah, I was really prioritising my mental health last year. As I’ve said to you, started going to a therapist, doing at least monthly breath work sessions with a breath work coach, which really helped calm the nervous system, bring me back into balance. And I guess also highlighting. When you’ve got that mental space and area for reflection, it highlights where you are overstepping your own boundaries. And yeah, then from there, once I figured that stuff out, going into I guess you could say the technical side of, okay, let’s rework the contracts. Let’s get clear on the website about what’s included, what’s not. Let’s put pricing out there so I can just be really transparent and try to cut down on the wrong type of people inquiring. So yeah, I guess it was an ongoing journey and still is, but it was both that inner work and then also looking at the practical stuff as well.

CLARE:

Yeah. And this is the thing that I see a lot, is that people often, we’ve spoken about the Be, Do, Have Model that when people want to have a certain outcome, they think, “Oh, just go and do the thing.” And then they might do the thing, so they might put their prices up, and then someone goes, “Well, I don’t want to work with you. I think you’re horrible.” And then they spiral and go, “Oh my gosh, this was all a disaster.” So they go back to their old patterns, their old pricing, or they might, to your point, draw boundaries with clients. Now, when you first set a boundary with clients, they’re not going to be happy about it. I mean, obviously, they’re used to getting someone who gives them everything 1,000 times more than what they actually got paid for. They want to keep having that going forward, so this is why that ‘Be’ part, fundamentally changing your sense of self-worth, your sense of self-confidence that if someone says no to you, you’re like, “Fine. I’ve got other clients who will come and work with me and are happy to respect my boundaries.” And I’ve witnessed that transformation in you. I remember at the start when we were first talking about it, your eyes were like dinner plates like, “What do you mean saying no to people? I have to keep working with all these clients who don’t pay me enough money, who don’t really treat me well. But if I say no to them, my business is all going to disappear.” And that’s why all this work has been so amazing. It’s exactly the same work that I’ve been doing, going to a therapist, prioritising self-care, really getting clear about being in the CEO role in the business. And that’s where it starts. It starts with being the next level version of you and then the action, that’s the stuff that comes after. And we have to keep coming back to that, the mindset of it, don’t we? So when things are going to be pear shaped, it’s good. Okay, why am I doing this? Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I was on the verge of burnout. I wouldn’t have a business that I love.

So speaking about that, share a little bit more about what your business looks like now. Are you still feeling burnt out all the time or is it just some of the time or is it none of the time?

How creating boundaries helped Lauren reduce burnout

LAUREN:

Look, definitely still some of the time, because I think that is business. We had the Christmas Break, which was lovely, but that meant January was full on. So, of course, there’s going to be busier periods than others, but overall I don’t work weekends, I rarely work past 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday I still do take some flex here and there to go hang out and have coffee with my sister, see my little niece. So I’ve got a lot of balance, and the amazing thing is that was why I started the business, because I wanted flexibility. And so now I’m finally living that and loving it. That’s why I want to work for myself. But it’s funny because previously it would’ve been like, “No, I have to keep working. I can’t stop working. Especially those first couple of years, it was even when I didn’t have enough clients to be doing full-time hours, it’s like, “I can’t not work. I’ve got to push through and come up with something to do just to be busy.”

Whereas now it’s, “No, actually, I worked really hard last week. I’m feeling I need a bit of space. I am going to have a slower morning or go for a walk down the beach,” et cetera. And yeah, the business is constantly growing for it. So it’s, actually, those fears that if I stopped working or I stopped pleasing people, everything would crumble and the business wouldn’t continue, it’s actually the opposite and it’s continued thriving and still is. And now I’m very much aware that it’s me. If I’m looking after myself, then I’m able to show up better in the business, I’m putting the right energy out there to be connecting and attracting more of the right type of clients. So yeah, I’ve got a lot more trust in things working now.

CLARE:

That’s amazing. So we were actually just having a chat off air before we got started about where your revenue is at since jumping in the Mastermind compared to where it was before. Do you mind sharing with the listeners? This is meaning you’re working less hours, feeling less overwhelmed, working with clients that are aligned to what it is that you would like. Where is your revenue I’m sitting at now as compared to a year ago?

LAUREN:

It’s doubled.

CLARE:

Yay! Now that is just incredible, isn’t it?

LAUREN:

Yes!

CLARE:

And this is the thing, the stories that we have around money, because the reality is that the less that you have been hustling, the more that you have had space to be strategic, you’ve been able to take on more aligned work because you’re not doing all of this free work, and therefore you are earning more.

So that is so wonderful and we are all celebrating your success. And the cool thing is too. I know that it’s only just getting started. I still think there’s so much scope for you to be going even bigger with the business and really getting the business to that even next level. So it’s so wonderful to witness and it’s been such a pleasure being part of the journey. Thank you so much for sharing a bit about that. I would like for you to maybe share, if anyone is listening and they are loving your story and would like to work with LMF, what’s the best way that they can connect with you, follow your marketing tips, and connect with you?

LAUREN:

I’m very much a chatter and love talking it through, so if you do feel it’s aligned, I would say head over to the website, which is lmfmarketing.com.au. And from there you can book in a call, just a quick intro call to say hi, and see if I can maybe support you. But otherwise, if you just want to connect and follow along, it’s @LMF_Marketing on Instagram.

CLARE:

Wonderful. Well, I’ll put all of those links in the show notes for today’s episode. If someone is listening to this episode and they are thinking about jumping into the Profit Masters Mastermind, is there any thoughts that you have that you would like to share with them?

LAUREN:

Ooh. I think you know when you’re ready for these kinds of things, even when there’s that fear around investing. I was just pulled to working with you and then I knew I was at a stage of the business where I was ready to. And then connecting with you, I was like, “Yeah. Okay. This is the time, it’s going to happen, and I know it’s going to help me get to that next level.” If you’re feeling you are ready to really scale things up and do the work, then follow that gut. Definitely, I think it’s been amazing working with you, Clare, so I can’t recommend highly enough.

CLARE:

Oh, thank you, Lauren. It’s been such a pleasure having you inside and appreciate your time today.

If you have been looking to do work on your self-worth and your money mindset inside a high ticket, fully supported community, you are going to love what I have created for you. Introducing the Profit Power Week, where you can come inside and sample what it’s like to be inside my Profit Masters Mastermind. This is five days where you will get to experience what it’s like inside the Profit Masters Mastermind and it’s yours to sample for free. There will be two live coaching calls with me as well as a week of Voxer support, which is voice and text messaging access to me and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. To join, you must be a service based business making at least six figures revenue a year.

Thanks so much for listening. If you loved this episode, please share it with your audience. And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at @Clare_Wood_Coach. And also make sure you hit Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week and I look forward to talking to you again next week.