How to Show Up Fully For Your Clients

I had just gotten off a really intense and emotional coaching call with a client...and had three minutes to get ready for a sales call with a prospective client. I had three minutes to collect and ground myself before going into a meeting where the pressure was on to perform at my best.

In this episode, I talk about what I did in just three minutes to clear my emotionally charged energy and center myself to show up fully for my next meeting. I talk about how it impacted my results (spoiler alert: I got the client), and, more importantly, how you can use these same practices to make sure that you're showing up fully for your own coaching clients and prospects.

 Hello, and welcome to the Client Attractor Show, where we talk about concrete tactics and strategies that you can use to attract your dream clients. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, client attraction coach and author of the brand new book Client Attractor. If you've not gotten your copy yet, you can pick that up today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or clientattractorbook.com. 

In today's episode, I'm going to be talking a little bit about how to show up fully for your clients and how to make sure that you are on all of your calls, not just client calls, but calls with prospective clients, fully present for them and giving them what they need. The reason I want to stress this today is that it can be really, really difficult to continue showing up in the same way for each and every client and prospective client. When you are having a lot of these calls, it can really wear you out sometimes, and that's something that we want to be very aware of in our businesses and in our daily lives. 

I want to begin with a story from a few years ago, when I was working with a particular client who was having a lot of difficulties. A lot of her own emotional past was coming up in our conversations, and one thing I'm always very aware of when I am working with clients is that I'm not a therapist, and I am not the person who someone needs to go to to work through their trauma. More than anything, that is a boundary that I'm really firm about holding. At the same time, I know that sometimes I have to provide space for that, that I have to continue the conversation and let them share what's coming up for them, knowing that in my role as a client attraction coach, I'm not in a position to prompt them to dig deeper or to really address that trauma in a meaningful way. 

I was on the call with this client in this situation, and I was in that place where I knew that I had to hold space for her to share what was coming up for her, but that I had to be careful about what I said; I knew that I could actually worsen the situation because, like I said, I don't have the proper training to deal with trauma and emotional health. That's just the reality of it. And this call was really, really quite intense. There were tears involved. It was really emotional for both the client and, to some extent, me, because I am a highly empathic person. 

Our call together was scheduled to end at 11:30 a.m., which I had planned out pretty perfectly, because it would give me time to prepare for my 12 p.m. call. I'd have 30 minutes in between. But as 11:30 came and went, I knew that I had to keep showing up for this client that I was already on a call with, that I couldn't say, “Okay, it's 11:30. Time’s out. I'm going to need you to go.” Maybe it would have been a little bit different if I had an 11:30 call, if I had calls scheduled back to back, but I didn't, and I could continue to stay on with this client for a little bit longer. So I did. 

Ultimately, we got off of our session at 11:57, which was three minutes before my next call, which was a really important sales call with a prospective client for a $7,000 sale. These three minutes are the ones that I want to emphasize in this story. Ultimately, it's not about the first client, and ultimately, it's not about how that second call went. It's about what I managed to do with those three minutes I had between getting off an intense, emotionally charged coaching call and getting on a super important sales call, where I knew I had to 100% be performing at my best. 

What did I do during those three minutes? Well, I could have done what I might have done several years prior, which would have been to scramble about, try and get ready, just freak out, thinking, Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I had this call in three minutes, and I'm not prepared, and I’m working myself into this state of frenzy and anxiety, but fortunately, that's not at all but I did. Instead, I took those three minutes, I went outside onto my front porch, I did 10 jumping jacks, and when I came back inside, I stood in the middle of my office, I closed my eyes, and I said out loud, “I am going to show up fully 100% for this prospective client right now, and I am going to help her get exactly what she needs, and I'm going to focus only on that for the next 45 minutes.” 

And all through that meeting, all through those next 45 minutes, I was performing at peak levels. I was on top of my game, and I made that sale purely because I was 100% focused and putting all of my energy towards showing up for that prospective client. There was nothing else that entered my mind during those 45 minutes other than How can I serve this person? That's what got me the sale, despite having been in such an emotionally charged, almost fragile, state just moments before getting on this call. 

Obviously, this is a less than ideal situation in a lot of ways. It is not sustainable to be jumping from emotionally charged scenario to emotionally charged scenario, with three minutes in between to get yourself together. That's not sustainable; it's significantly less than ideal. But this particular story, in this particular instance, has a couple things that we can look at and unpack to see how we might be able to implement them in a more sustainable, healthier way, so that we can show up fully for our clients. 

There are several things I want to highlight looking back at those really key three minutes. The first was this emotional energy-clearing that I did. The way I did this, in this case, was through some sort of physical activity, through physically moving my body to clear that emotional charge, clear that emotional energy that was weighing me down and affecting me. Another way to think of that is simply as shaking it out, just shaking everything out, all that tension that was sitting in my body, and just getting it outside of myself, so that it was not just sitting inside of me like a pit in my stomach. 

The second thing I did that I want to highlight was when I came inside, and I said to myself, “Okay, I am going to show up fully for this client and help her get exactly what she needs.” There are a couple things in there that I want to look at. The first is that I was replacing that energy I had just gotten rid of with something else. I'd gotten all of that emotional charge outside of me, but I had this almost empty space that I needed to fill. That's why I shook out all of that energy, so that I could replace it with something else, with something that would be more useful to me in this second meeting. 

And the second piece of that invocation or prayer or mantra—whatever you want to call it—is that I was setting an intention. I wasn't just saying “Okay, I want to be focused.” I was setting the intention of the meeting: I'm going to help this prospect get exactly what she needs. The intention was not “I'm going to make a sale.” The intention was “I'm going to help her get what she needs.” That's an important distinction, and it's one that we can talk about in a later episode, but the important piece to note here is about the importance of setting that intention before every engagement you have, whether it's with a prospect or a client or any other type of person you engage with in your business, or even your life, for that matter. 

Looking at how I spent those three minutes, that's a great framework for centering yourself so that you can show up fully for your clients and prospects. Of course, like I said, ideally, that's not a three-minute process. Honestly, how long it takes is going to depend on how long you need. For example, I know for myself that if I want to really center myself before heading into a call, I need at least 15 minutes to go through that process of clearing out any energy that I need to get rid of and centering myself before going into that meeting. It may be five minutes for you. It may be 30. The important piece is that you're intentional about what you're doing in order to be present for your clients and to give them what they need in that moment without letting your own baggage or energy affect that in a negative way. 

As always, thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of the Client Attractor Show. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Until then, take care.