4 Ways the Love-Based Concept Plays Out in Your Business

Therese Skelly, the author of Love-Based Mission: How to Create a Business That Serves Your Soul, is here today with the second of a 2-part article to give you a sneak peek of her book. Take it away Therese!

Last week, I explained and defined Michele PW’s love-based philosophy. (If you missed it, go here to read it now.)

As promised, today, I’m sharing with your four ways the love-based concept plays out in your business.

Let’s get started.

Marketing

This is a big one! With “old school” marketing, we are literally taught to push the pain and play to the fear.

You can see fear-based marketing at play when you get one of those last-minute, kinda-desperate emails from someone who’s launch is clearly not going well.

Let me clarify something right here, though—there absolutely is a place for pain in love-based marketing.

Your client IS in some sort of pain, so you do have to kind of let folks say to themselves, “OMG, she is talking about what I’m feeling now.” So yes, there may be some messaging in your marketing copy where you illuminate where your ideal client is struggling a bit now, or what might happen if things don’t change.

But which works better?

Gently acknowledging the pain, and then, asking them what they desire? Or turning the knife, so to speak, making the pain even worse so they feel desperate to do something—anything—to get out of it?

With the former, you show your potential clients that you have a very good understanding of what they are struggling with. Then, you encourage them to get clear on what they would love to have in their life instead of that pain.

This kind of love-based marketing will bring you clients who aren’t just looking for you to “save them” from their scary situations. Remember, you also have to trust that the right clients will find you. (Yes, that takes a lot of faith, trust, and surrender!)

Selling

Fear-based selling uses manipulative or shaming tactics … it’s about doing everything you can to get the sale.

Years ago, I had a discovery session with a prospective client. She had no money, and had lost her home to foreclosure, yet a coach had convinced her that she would “save” her. That poor, scared woman racked up $1500 a month on a credit card to work with that coach but got zero results. She was going deeper and deeper in debt as she succumbed to a fear-based sales pitch. That truly broke my heart.

Being love-based means turning clients away or directing them to another resource if they aren’t the best fit for you. It’s first trusting that the right people will come to you, and then, that you can have a genuinely helpful conversation enrolling then in your services without ever pushing someone to buy something that is not the right fit.

Growing Your Business

You may be trying to grow your business by doing things that work for the gurus out there, but that you don’t love, or that don’t resonate with who you are anymore. If this is you, you are fearful that if you don’t do it a certain way, it will never work.

That means that instead of tapping into the soul of your business, or following your intuition, you are afraid that, if you don’t get on the Instagram train, you’ll be lost. Or despite hating the idea of doing a podcast, you are terrified of not doing it, because what if there IS only one way to grow your business, and that’s it? After all, “they” say it works, so you have to follow it. Right?

Can you feel how that could sap the life out of you?

Why even go into a business that is YOURS if you have to do things you hate and/or don’t resonate with?

Now, before we go any further, I’m hearing those gremlins in your head right now, right along with those teachers who tell you that you must be willing to do “whatever it takes” to succeed. “Need to scrub some toilets to get ahead? Freaking do it! Want money in the door? Then make those darn cold calls. New in town? Get yourself to as many networking meetings as you possible can.”

Not sure about you, but when I read those directives and feel the rather harsh, often fear-based energy that goes along with them, I just wanna recoil and sit on my couch to watch bad reality shows!

Why? Because even though there must be willingness to stretch and be outside our comfort zone, doing the WRONG thing for the WRONG reason will never yield the best results. Period!

The work I do with my folks is to find what they would love—what would light them up. Not overly keen on a podcast? How about speaking, or creating workshops? There are things that you are better fit for energetically, and a good mentor will not force you and your business into a paint-by-number formula.

When you shift to the love-based way of doing things, you tune into yourself, listen to what lights you up, and connect with your prospective clients, in a way that works for everyone.

Soooo much easier and lighter!

Serving Your Clients

When you are fear-based, you keep trying to win your clients over, so you go overboard to please them, often sacrificing yourself for them. You fear that if you are not everything to them, if you don’t work on their schedule, that they will leave you. (If this is you, I hate to say it but … your business can’t serve you this way!)

When you’re love-based, you actually love YOU more! You factor into the equation what YOU want and need first, and when you come from that place, your clients will happily work within your boundaries.

Also, I want to note that when it comes to serving your clients, you are not doing them justice if you are too afraid to speak the truth or share what you see. In this way, you’re not being authentic. Done purposefully, always with love, and in a “take-a-stand-for-them” way, it calls them out and holds them responsible.

If you can’t do this, you really aren’t serving them at all. You are instead keeping yourself locked in fear, which means you’re keeping yourself small. And that could be one of your old ways of coping showing up again.

When you decide to shift from love to fear, the very first step is to look at your old beliefs and what may be holding you back, so you can then move into the new identity that would serve you better.

If you want to learn more, check out my book Love-Based Mission: How to Have a Business That Serves Your Life.