Creating Presence With Patience
I recently had a conversation with a fellow “Gorilla” (i.e. a member of “Getting Sales Without Being Sales-y” aka “Gorilla Army Nation”). We were talking about how, as entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time making ourselves visible, but not just generally visible. We take a good, hard look at our skill set, and what problems we solve for people. Then we look around to see who might benefit most from what we offer.
I’ve oversimplified for the sake of space (and not boring you to death with details), but my point is, eventually, we’re creating some kind of content that will pique the interest of our Ideal Client (ICA). The ultimate goal is to have people coming to us rather than playing the “numbers game” of cold calling, or pounding the sidewalks in some way. As both of us are starting to see some movement in our direction lately, it led me to comment that our biggest asset is patience.
I realized long ago that client acquisition isn’t beating someone down until they buy your stuff just to get you to shut up. It isn’t swallowing your pride and turning yourself into whatever the client wants. (frankly, I got enough of that in my years as little more than a corporate drone). Instead, it’s, as Landon keeps saying, a lot like dating. In this case, it’s like looking for love in all the right places. Like finding a mate, it takes time, effort, and a series of adjustments to figure out where the right places are.
Doing More Listening Than Talking
For me, it also took awhile to figure out what my strengths really were, and what unique things I 
offered my clients. I’ve learned to do that, you have to do some talking, but you have to do a lot more listening. Talking gives people a chance to get to know you, and maybe understand a little bit about you do. But listening tells you several things:
- What others think you do
- What others need to make their lives easier
- How others are feeling overwhelmed, and what they’re willing to do about it
- Whether what others believe you do is something they consider valuable (if they ask questions to better understand, it’s a good thing, so be ready to dive deeper, but only when asked)
- Who will be someone you’ll love to work with
By listening, I’ve learned a lot about how people perceive my skills and more about who sees them as valuable and who doesn’t. I’ve learned who I do want to work with, and what qualities send me running for the hills. In short, it’s helped me refine my ICA by giving me other qualities, both positive and negative, to look for in a potential client. Despite the two very different hats I wear (accounting and ghostwriting), I’m learning a lot of those qualities are the same.
Finding Your ICA Requires Patience
It’s not only reaching the right people that requires patience. It’s the refining process itself. I’ve made tons of mistakes in the process, and been close to giving up more times than I can count. I believe I lack patience, yet somehow, I always found a reason to keep going; to keep trying; to keep adjusting. I’d get frustrated when I saw someone post their successes after what seemed like an incredibly short time.
Patience made me take a step back and recognize a few things:
- I don’t know where they started from
- I don’t know how marketable their skills are compared to mine
- I don’t know who their market is or how well they’ve already defined it
- I don’t know how much effort they put into their process
- I don’t know how well they’d already clarified their message
- I don’t know how much help they got from outside sources.
The last one might be the biggest thing others take advantage of. I’m not good at asking for help, and I sure as heck don’t willingly drop thousands on coaches. If nothing else, I still don’t have the confidence I’d recoup what I spent in what I’d consider a reasonable amount of time. Others might say I haven’t yet scaled up to that level, either mentally or financially. It goes back to not knowing where they started from vs my own starting point.
Persistence vs Patience
Nevertheless, everyone was where I’m at right now at some point in their journey. Maybe not in 
exactly the same way, but everyone builds their business step by step. Everyone makes mistakes along the way; some painful, some expensive, and all educational.
Some might say persistence is more important than patience. I’d argue that premise by saying you can be as persistent as you want, but if you don’t have the patience to give opportunities and results a chance to manifest, persistence will be little more than beating your head against a brick wall until you decide you’re tired of the bruises. Too often, people are persistent until they exhaust themselves, and they give up just before opportunities begin to appear, or miss seeing them entirely because they’ve run out of patience; the ability to let things happen in their own time.
Granted, we all have our own motivating factors; some more extreme than others. I certainly know my share of people who pushed on because they needed to succeed to survive. Yet how many millions just like them gave up too soon? Being destitute and having children to feed is no guarantee a person will press on, doing whatever they have to in order to succeed. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have a homeless problem, or poverty.
Learning I Have More Patience Than I Believed
I’ve long said patience wasn’t one of my strong suits, but clearly, it was a lie, and worse, a self-limiting belief. Now that I believe in my ability to be patient, the clouds are parting, the sun is shining and illuminating opportunities I might have missed while I was still lying to myself. I might wish I’d cleared it sooner, but I know there were other, more insidious lies and self-limiting beliefs I had to clear first.
As more light shines on how I view my skills, what I can offer others, how I can help other people make their lives simpler in some way, my confidence is growing by leaps and bounds. I’ve let go of those nasty feelings of desperation I used to have, envisioned a much brighter future for myself, and look at every single opportunity that comes my way with a critical eye, and positive indifference. I’m now confident the opportunities I’m meant to take on will come with minimal effort and lots of occasions to learn and grow. If you ask me, that’s one of the biggest advantages to working for myself.
About the Author
Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri 
believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income. If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author. And check out her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward.
Be sure to watch this space for news of the upcoming releases of ” Rebuilding After Suicide” and “Sasha’s Journey”.
