Clare Josa | Author And Keynote Speaker

UK's Foremost Imposter Syndrome Expert, International Keynote Speaker & 8x Author

Clear Out Your Blocks

Gratitude: Why Positive Thinking Isn’t Enough

Clear Out Your Blocks

“But how do I feel gratitude? I get stuck with thinking it and it doesn’t make any difference!”

This fabulous question was asked by one of my readers this week.

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room – why so often positive thinking isn’t enough; it doesn’t work. In fact, it can make us feel worse.

And if you’re a passionate world changer, it can hold you back from making the difference you are really here to make in the world.

If you ever get stuck in your ‘thinking mind’, you won’t want to miss this video.

Here’s a whistle-stop tour of the neuroscience behind this – and some practical inspiration for what you can do instead.

 

Let me know how you get on with the techniques I share in this video – which shifts they create for you. And how might you remind yourself to use them? I’d love to hear from you, via the comments.

And if you want more inspiration from my ‘The School Run’s Done’ series, here’s where you can find the archives.

x Clare

Clare Josa | Mentor to Passionate World Changers

P.S. Not got A Year Full Of Gratitude yet? Order your copy today and make sure you join the readers’ club to learn how to turn your inner critic into your biggest cheerleader. x C.

Gratitude & Sticky Socks: Why Positive Thinking Can Be A Waste Of Time

Clear Out Your Blocks

In today’s #theschoolrunsdone inspiration for Passionate World Changers, we’re talking about stinky sports socks and gratitude – and why this is a metaphor for how positive thinking can be a waste of time:


So, were you trying to dilute that stinky sock water with a thimble-full of positive thinking? Are you ready to pull the plug and let the sink empty, so you can fill it back up with thoughts that make you feel happier?

Remember: you get a year full of step-by-step how-to in A Year Full Of Gratitude. I’d love to share this journey with you.

x Clare

Imposter Syndrome: It’s Not All In Your Head

Clear Out Your Blocks

Despite melting in the UK’s heat wave (yes, it finally got too hot even for my Mediterranean blood) I’ve been talking about imposter syndrome – it has been everywhere. It has come up in groups I’m in on social media, it has come up with mentoring clients, and I even ran a deep-dive training session on it yesterday.

But here’s the thing: imposter syndrome isn’t all in your head.

It isn’t something you can ‘think’ your way out of.

And it breaks my heart to see people trying to ‘push on through’ with imposter syndrome, like it’s something we have to put up with, living life through gritted teeth and pretending we’re ok.

  • ​If you’re about to go on stage and imposter syndrome strikes, it will affect your neurochemistry and make it harder for you to be in flow – to inspire.
  • If you get an email from a journalist, asking for an interview, you’re more likely to ‘accidentally’ leave replying until it’s too late.
  • If you’re offered an opportunity that could give you a chance to shine – and make the difference you’re really here to make – then imposter syndrome could cause you to convince yourself you’re too busy, or it’s not a good fit for you.
  • If we secretly dream of publishing a book, it gets us distracted by ‘other priorities’, turning down PR or even not writing it at all.
  • And it gets us discounting our prices, even before potential clients have asked about our fees. And not sending newsletters, because we’re telling ourselves that we ‘don’t want to bother people’.

 

Imposter syndrome happens when who we think we need to be, to fulfil our dreams, doesn’t match with how we see ourselves.

And when you make changes at that deepest level, the whole myriad of limiting beliefs, thought patterns, habits and stresses that go with imposter syndrome melt away.

I’m not sitting in an ivory tower on this. The night before Dare to Dream Bigger was due to go to the printer, I deleted the manuscript. Properly deleted. “Who am ​I ​to publish a book on the ‘inside work’ for changing the world?” Obviously, the fact that so many of you gorgeous Passionate World Changers have read it means I did my work on myself and then found a copy on my backup drive. But it doesn’t mean that imposter syndrome experience wasn’t life-flooringly real.

 

Imposter syndrome affects us all, if we’re stretching a comfort zone, if we haven’t done that identity-level inside work, first.

But most of us pretend it’s not there. In fact, it’s one of the very last blocks to go, when you’re working on your personal development.

 

I don’t want you to have to risk dreaming big, but playing small, just because of imposter syndrome.

So I’m running a masterclass for you, next Thursday (2nd August) at 3pm UK time, on the six steps to ditching imposter syndrome – once and for all. The beauty of these six steps is you can use them for the deep-dive self-work to clear out your hidden blocks, or you can run through them in sixty seconds, right before you go on stage.

If you’d like to bag your place and get the link to join us live (or to get the replay), let me know now:

 

Imposter Syndrome Masterclass

Learn the six steps to setting yourself free from dreaming big, but playing small - in this interactive live training with Clare Josa.

 

And I’ll send you a few useful imposter syndrome quick fix tips between now and the masterclass, plus a pre-session workbook, so you can get started already.

I’d love to get to share this with you.

x Clare

Clare Josa

P.S. The absolute best way to set yourself free from imposter syndrome is small-group or one-to-one work. If you’ve had your ‘basta-moment’ (see page 88 of Dare to Dream Bigger or search ‘favourite Italian word’ in the Kindle version) with imposter syndrome and want to find out how quickly we could shift this, together, book a chat with me here.

​

6 Simple Steps To Moving Beyond ‘Surviving’ & Falling In Love With ‘Thriving’

Clear Out Your Blocks

Here's instant access to the replay of this masterclass. In it I take you through the six simple steps I had to follow earlier this year, to take myself from 'surviving' back to falling in love with 'thriving'.

You'll try each step on for size, learn the key steps you need - and get a chance to win a one-to-one breakthrough session with me, which is usually £395.

Let me know your answers to the questions, via the comments.

x Clare

The doors are now closed for the 2018 summer school. But if the topics in this training resonated with you and you'd like to work one-to-one on them, here's where to find out more about how we could work together.

x Clare 

[Rant Alert] Why We’ve Got To Take Responsibility For The Inside Work Teachers We Choose

Clear Out Your Blocks

It’s time for each of us to take responsibility for the inside work teachers we choose… One of the biggest benefits of meditating regularly is that it’s easier to ride the waves of emotions that otherwise derail us for days. So ‘how dare I’ post a ‘rant’ post? Well, because I’m done with seeing people being lied to about their inner journey. Here’s what tipped me over the edge today.

 Udemy is now offering a course, which has had nearly 30,000 students take it, to study to become a Mindfulness Practitioner and Master Teacher for just £9.99. An online course.

Yes, it’s usually £199, but as a Udemy instructor, I know all too well that their favourite habit is to discount life-changing and business-growing and career-transforming courses to less than the price of a pizza, making the whole online training industry a race to the bottom on pricing. This course will be £10 much more often than it’s £200.

 

What’s The Problem With An Online Meditation Teacher Training Course? Why Do We Need To Choose Our Inside Work Teachers More Carefully?

 

Here are three reasons why my soap box has been dragged out of its not-so-dusty corner:

 

1. Without feedback from an experienced teacher, learning is flawed.

“We don’t know what we don’t know.”

On page 273 of Dare to Dream Bigger, I talk about how the motto ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’ is fundamentally flawed and it’s the slowest way to make progress. Why? Because – as Einstein allegedly said – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.

 

There’s more to teaching meditation and mindfulness than reciting visualisations from a worksheet – so much more.

How can you give a student detailed feedback on their posture, if no one has ever done it for you? The computer running that online course can’t do it for you.

When teaching meditation and mindfulness, there’s so much more to it than techniques – or even mindset. You need to be able to hold the energetic space, so that students feel safe – the simple act of closing our eyes can make us feel vulnerable. Sitting in silence is something that terrifies many of us. You can’t test a teacher’s ability to do that for their students via an online course.

 

As an NLP Trainer since 2003, I have been trained in how to teach at both a conscious and subconscious level, helping students to create lasting change, as easily as possible. And the one thing I have seen to be true with every student I have ever taught, with every mentoring client and with myself, is:

Practice doesn't make perfect, unless you're getting quality feedback. Click To Tweet

 

And when leading meditations, the voice you use, the language you use and the pauses you leave are all an essential part of the process. We don’t realise when we’re making mistakes, when we’re learning – otherwise we wouldn’t make them. Without that feedback from a mentor, the quality of teaching risks being much lower than the students deserve. We will pass our ‘bad habits’ on to our students – no matter how well-intentioned we are.

I remember, back in 2008, when I was studying to become a meditation teacher, there was one piece of feedback that transformed the way I teach. It caused me to make a tiny tweak that took me to the next level of teaching. Had it been a computer assessing me, instead of an expert mentor, I would still be making that mistake, without realising.

You wouldn't want an amateur teaching your teen to drive, so why trust your inner happiness to someone who was taught by a computer? #meditationteacherClick To Tweet

It is in the feedback that we grow. Practice, without feedback, risks making you better at doing it the wrong way.

 

2. There’s a world of difference between someone who’s good at something and someone who’s a great teacher.

Unconscious competence is the training world’s way of telling us that we usually don’t consciously know how we do something we’re great at. The so-called ‘learning ladder’ starts with:

  • unconscious incompetence – where we don’t realise we don’t know how to do something
  • Then we move to conscious incompetence – we are aware we can’t do something and choose whether or not to learn it.
  • Then we move to conscious competence – where each step of the ‘doing’ takes effort to remember and apply.
  • Finally, we shift into unconscious competence – where the new skill is second nature and we can do it without thinking.

Beyond that is mastery – where we have practised for the mythical 10,000 hours to become truly outstanding at whatever it is we are doing. And somewhere in the middle of that is the ability to teach.

Concert pianists don’t usually make the best teachers. Why? Because to be able to break a technique down into the building blocks that allow a beginner to learn it, you need to become consciously competent again – you need to take your skill out of ‘autopilot’ and be able to figure out both the physical and psychological (and sometimes even – engineer-approved woo woo – energetic) steps that make success inevitable.

During my NLP Trainers’ Training, deconstructing and modelling mastery, to be able to teach it, was one of the core topics we were taught.

I see this daily with high-ticket business programmes, where someone has made lots of money and sells their blueprint to hopeful entrepreneurs who fail to achieve the same level of success. It’s not because the blueprint doesn’t work. It’s because the master hadn’t understood the hidden steps, beliefs and inner shifts they subconsciously created, which led to their success, so they miss them out of the programme.

There's a world of difference between a Master and a great Teacher. #meditationteacher #mindfulnessClick To Tweet

As a formally trained meditation, mindfulness and yoga teacher (and the author of two published books on the topic), I am very aware of the responsibility I have towards my students and how to spot and handle any ‘wobble’ someone might have, as a result of the techniques I teach. Meditation, mindfulness and yoga are all designed to bring body and mind (and energy) into harmony – in this moment. For those of us who have thought patterns that have been causing us pain or physical, mental and emotional blocks, those releases can be difficult.

You can’t teach someone how to spot those in an online course.

You certainly can’t test their ability to navigate those choppy waters and keep a student safe, via an online course.

 

3. A good teacher has done their ‘inside work’.

To be able to hold the space for your meditation and mindfulness students, you need to be a good few steps ahead of them on your own inside work. You need to have been clearing out destructive thought patterns, letting go of old blame and victim stories, grounding your energies daily. You need to be walking your talk. And meaning it.

They are looking to you to lead them.

15+ years of teaching in the personal and spiritual development world have taught me that a teacher cannot take their students past an inner block that they, themselves, have not yet cleared. And, yes, I’m looking in the mirror!

The most important steps on my journey to become a meditation and mindfulness teacher (and a yoga teacher) were those points where my mentor ‘held my head under water’ – where he didn’t let me run from my fears or out-of-date conditioning or negative self-talk. Going right through the centre of those blocks created breakthroughs that made me a happier person and a much better teacher.

No computer course could ever have done that for me.

 

If you want to learn to study meditation or mindfulness – big happy dance, it’s great! – then I strongly encourage you to find a face-to-face teacher and to ask them the ten questions I wish students would ask me, before they hire me! (Here are my answers).

 

There are some parts of our inner development that we should never delegate to a computer. #meditationteacher #mindfulness #insideworkClick To Tweet

 

If you choose an online course – here’s one I prepared earlier – make sure it’s one that includes feedback from a human being, not just a computer. Make it sure it includes some kind of live interaction with the teacher and an accountability peer group. And, even though it’s online, still ask the tutor these ten questions, before signing up.

 

And if you do want to study to become a meditation and mindfulness teacher, please, please, please do it with an accredited company – one that will give you the feedback you need to become the best teacher you can; one that will support you and encourage you; one that will help you to help your students to create a life-long habit they fall in love with. I recommend the team at Dru Worldwide, where I studied. You can find out more about their courses here.

 

When everyone else in the world is taking life online, I strongly believe there are some things we should still do face-to-face (even if via the internet) – where that human connection is what creates the magic. And studying mindfulness and meditation – especially to become a teacher – is something you should never have to do on your own.

 

And I’d love to hear from you:

  • Do you agree / disagree with my rant?
  • What could we do to make sure we raise the standards with the teachers we choose on our ‘inside work’ journey?
  • And what do you look for in a great teacher?

 

And breathe…!

x Clare

P.S. Want to study meditation and mindfulness with me? Here’s my current workshop list and here is my interactive online how to meditate course – or you could read 52 Mindful Moments or the 28 Day Meditation Challenge.

‘Free For Exposure’? Is ‘Giving On Empty’ Killing Your Business? The Solopreneur’s Secret Curse [DTDB038]

Clear Out Your Blocks, Podcasts

Are you exhausted from ‘giving on empty’? Had enough of ‘free for exposure’?

Check out today’s Dare To Dream Bigger podcast to find out the real reason why we fall into that trap and how you could set yourself free, today:

[smart_track_player url=”https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dtdbpodcast/dtdbpodcast038.mp3″ tweet_text=”Free For Exposure? Is ‘Giving On Empty’ Killing Your Business?” hashtag=”entrepreneur, #smallbiz, #solopreneur” twitter_username=”clare_josa” ]

Clare Josa's podcast - Dare To Dream Bigger - Is available on iTunes

Resources From Today’s Episode:

Loved this? Please subscribe via iTunes, maybe leave a lovely review and – above all – share this episode far and wide with fellow passionate world-changers.
Thank you!

x Clare

Clare Josa, Author of Dare To Dream Bigger | ‘Inside Work’ Mentor For Entrepreneurs & Passionate World-Changers

Prefer The Transcript?

Going solo and setting up your own business felt like such a great idea. Escaping the rat race, having freedom, creating the lifestyle you had been dreaming of, being able to get to the kids’ sports’ days, as well as seeing clients at times to suit you. You were the envy of your colleagues, as you nervously walked away from that near-guaranteed pay cheque. But you felt excited.

Fast-forward a couple of years and reality has, most likely, hit.

You’re working so hard ‘in’ your business that you rarely have time to work ‘on’ it. You’re lucky if you make the school play by the skin of your frazzled teeth and that ‘freedom lifestyle’ has become an 80-hour week.

And everyone seems to want you to give everything away for free.

You used to have regular money coming in but now, if you don’t work, you end up eating your savings.

And you’re sick and tired of being asked to do stuff ‘free for exposure’.

And here’s where the difference between a solopreneur / freelancer and a small business comes in:

When you’re running a business with employees, the pressure to make sure there are funds for their salaries means we take a totally different approach to marketing and freebies. You won’t do anything that could jeopardise the business. And we need to find ways to generate income – to make money – rather than just to earn it from the paid-per-hour model.

But if you’re a coach or a freelancer or a yoga teacher or an interior designer, chances are you’re stuck on the money-for-time model. And you’re likely to feel under pressure to grow your platform – to establish your brand as the go-to-expert in your niche – so you’ll be much more likely to consider ‘free for exposure’ opportunities.

“I thought it would be good exposure for you.”

What has it looked like for you, in the past? I’m curious: what kinds of ‘free for exposure’ requests have you had? (Let me know, via the comments). Some I’ve come across recently (and sometimes done!) include:

  • Keynote at a conference – for free
    A conference organiser recently invited me to present and then told me it would be unpaid, with no travel expenses and would I mind buying my own conference ticket? (Didn’t do that one!)
  • Write professional articles – for free
    There are Big-Name websites that want you to write for free, minimum 1,000 words, but it has to be exclusive content (you can’t even use it on your website). They make it clear they will only accept the ‘best’ articles – which could take a full day to write and edit. And all you’re allowed to mention is your Twitter ID, which is hidden after an advert (for them) at the end – and they even make sure your article won’t be indexed by Google. How does that translate into ‘exposure’?
  • Coach – for free
    Coaches who do hour-long ‘discovery’ calls with potential clients, who accidentally help them enough to get the ‘sticky plaster’ they wanted from the session, so they’re no longer hungry enough to pay for the package.
  • Narrate audio books – for free
    Professional audio book narrators (with a Big-Name self-publishing site) are routinely paid a split of revenue, with no up-front fee. They are then entirely dependent on the amateur marketing talents of the author to get any return on the 30+ hours the narration took them – and they often only net £1 per sale.
  • Write for magazines – for free
    If you’re writing a column for a magazine, you might get to choose between being paid (a token amount) or being able to mention your business.
  • Co-create a programme for international radio – for free
    Even the BBC does it. I heard recently about them asking a small business owner to give up 4 days of her time (you read that right), without even offering travel expenses, to help with a new radio programme, yet with no detail on how this might help her business or what angle they might take. There’s no way the presenter, editor or producer are working unpaid.
  • Bake a hundred cakes – for free
    A baker was asked to provide free cakes to the production team of a multi-million-pound-budget TV show who happened to be filming in her city.
  • Deliver online masterclasses – for free
    It’s common for live online summits to charge attendees for tickets, but with none of the revenue flowing to the presenters. And you’re in with 30 other experts, so by the time people get to your session, they’ll be too overwhelmed to remember your name.
  • Designing services ‘on spec’
    I once did a 3-way pitch for a corporate training gig, only to find my best ideas have been used by their HR team to deliver the course in-house. I was paid nothing. And there was no exposure! And that’s crazily common.

Are you feeling exhausted yet?!

I’m not trying to sound negative about these. But none of them is reasonable. Yet we say yes to ‘free for exposure’ requests, every day.

[Tweet “Are you giving away too much for free? Here’s how it could be hurting your business. #entrepreneur #smallbiz”]

And we do it to ourselves, too, even without being asked.

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Would You Stop ‘Moving The Free-Line’ Already?!

Biz-gurus advise us to give our best stuff away for free, promising us that the clients will flow.

No. They. Won’t.

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Not unless you’ve been ploughing your mortgage payments into Facebook ads and you have a super-tight, crazily-high-converting funnel or you already have 10,000 hungry fish on your email list.

These guys are forgetting to mention that what works for them won’t work for you.

Why not?

Because they already have 5-figure coaching clients who fund their kids’ shoes!

They can afford to give everything else away for free, in the hope that you’ll be so hungry to be like them that you’ll sign up for their $2k ‘this-fixes-everything-about-your-business’ programme. And enough of us will, to mean they can afford to fund the free stuff.

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There’s another problem with this:

They are training our potential clients to expect the world from us – for free.

And we’re playing along with the game.

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Are You ‘Giving On Empty’?

We reach a point where we have given so much – be it the newsletter, the podcast, the free 5-day challenges, the mini-video-trainings, the ‘discovery calls’, the interviews, the guest posts, the cheat sheets, the magazine articles, the conferences – that we have emptied our batteries, as well as our bank accounts.

We are out of energy. Out of cash. Out of hope. Ready to give up on our dreams. Feeling like a failure because our business isn’t reflecting the effort we’re putting in.

But we’re not just emptying – we’re filling up.

We fill up on resentment that everyone seems to want everything for free, self-criticism of not being the abundant success we had dreamed of, and full of all the reasons why ‘it’s not fair’.

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Seth Godin Has Some Advice For Us

This article was inspired by a super short post from Seth:

Don’t expect much from a drowning man. He’s not going to offer you a candy bar or ask how your day was.

He’s too busy not drowning.

Generosity takes effort.

It requires the space to take your mind off your own problems long enough to see someone else’s.

It requires the confidence to share when a big part of you wants to hoard.

And it requires the emotional labor of empathy.

Generosity begins by trusting ourselves enough to know that we’re not actually drowning.

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How often do we pause to consider whether or not we’re drowning, before we give more away for free?

[Tweet “#FreeForExposure Are we pretending that this over-giving is ok, when secretly it’s killing us? #smallbiz #entrepreneur”]

 

What Drives Us To Give-Until-We’re-Empty?

15 years of mentoring small business owners and passionate world-changers on the ‘inside work’ that makes the difference to our success have shown me it comes down to one little word, with massive power over our business decisions:

Fear.

We feel scared that:

  • if we say ‘no’, we’ll miss out on the one-last-thing that would have created a breakthrough
  • if we say ‘no’, we’ll get a reputation for being bolshy and no one will want to work with us
  • if we say ‘no’, someone won’t like us any more – we’ll offend them and we’ll feel guilty
  • if we say ‘no’, we’ll be a failure
  • if we say ‘no’, we’ll die in obscurity, eating crackers from supermarket dustbins, never having made the difference we are here to make

As our grandmothers used to say,

“If you don’t value yourself, no one else will.”

See page 122 of Dare To Dream Bigger for more on this.
Search for the quote above, if you have the Kindle version.

This fear has other effects, too:

  • We stop trusting our instincts and do what the ‘experts’ tell us we should be doing – free for exposure stuff
  • It feeds our inner critic, so we start to believe we’re not good enough to be running a business
  • We create a belief that no one wants to pay for anything any more, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – “that’s how it is in my industry!”
  • We give and give and then give some more, to over-compensate for Imposter Syndrome – feeling like a fraud

Like dogs can smell fear, ‘free-for-exposure’ requesters can smell desperation.

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Q: Is ‘Free For Exposure’ Ever A Good Idea?

Yes! It can be.

If the opportunity will…

  • genuinely get you in front of your dream audience…
  • sharing your core message, with passion…
  • and there is a tangible way for you to convert that ‘exposure’ into leads…
  • and you have the time and energy to deliver it…
  • and it doesn’t force you to back-burner more important plans…
  • and it feels like a fair ‘energy exchange’…

… then by all means consider it.

[Tweet “Q: Is #FreeForExposure ever a good idea? #entrepreneur #smallbiz #solopreneur”]

Freebies come at a cost.

They take your time, they may even cost you hard cash, they distract you from other work and they may even cause you to change your plans and priorities, to fit them in. They use your energy. You can even end up neglecting your own customers – your Tribe – in order to serve someone else’s or to hopefully reach a new audience, by delivering the promised freebie.

You can end up neglecting your health, as you cram freebies into your ‘spare’ time – and you can even end up seeing less of your loved-ones. And for those of us who have a tendency to be addicted to giving, doing ‘free work for exposure’ is something we are brilliant at justifying, because it meets our need to serve.

Yet if we don’t see the bigger picture and make these yes/no decisions from the space of wearing our ‘Big Girl Boots’, we risk ending up as the doormat for someone else to wipe their own Big Girl Boots on, instead. Like dogs can smell fear, free-for-exposure requesters can smell desperation. So it’s essential to do the ‘inside work’ to get your confidence and congruence sky-high before you hit ‘reply’.

And, at a deeper level, too many freebies – whether for others or in your own business – can make it harder to get paid for your work. The more you do for free, the more people will expect for free. And the more you get a reputation for doing stuff unpaid, the harder it might become for you to justify your usual rates.

By doing what you do best for free – ‘for exposure’ – you are teaching those who could help you connect with your dream audience that you don’t value your own time – or the transformation that your work delivers. Unless you set clear boundaries, it’s really hard to transition from ‘freebies for exposure’ to ‘paid for the value I deliver’.

 How much does a person actually need, to know whether or not they’re a good fit to work with you?

 

Treat ‘Free For Exposure’ Like A Marketing Expense

Set yourself a ‘freebie marketing budget’. Then when a request comes in, you could treat it like a business transaction – which it is. Look at the genuine cost to you – of your time and any travel, plus any other indirect costs. Remember that you might not be turning away paid clients to do it (or you might), but your time still has a value.

Then, when you have done your homework (see “The Questions You Must Must Must Ask” below), you should be able to figure out what the energy exchange will be. What do you / your business get from this project. How many subscribers might it bring you? How many new clients and customers might you reach?

Then – and it’s a real ‘finger-in-the-air’ thing, I know – does it balance out? If you were going to have to pay someone else to fulfil this commitment for you, out of a hard cash marketing budget, would it make business sense?

And of course the decision doesn’t have to be made just on pennies – you can use your intuition, too. But this simple process can help you to make clearer, more positive, more constructive business decisions – and put an end to you trashing your business through a constant stream of freebies.

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Some ‘exposure’ opportunities are genuine once-in-a-lifetime chances that shouldn’t be missed. Others literally suck – they will drain your energy and suck up time like you never imagined!

 So How Do You Spot The Difference?

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You need to do your homework – and I’ve got a gorgeous bonus for you in a moment to help you with that. But in the meantime, here are some quick ‘sanity-check’ questions you can ask yourself:

  • Would I offer this opportunity to someone else and think it was genuinely fair, or would my gut tell me I was taking advantage of them?
  • Is this opportunity truly a great fit with where I want to take my business and where my dream customers are hanging out?
  • If I had to pay myself to deliver on this opportunity, would I feel the benefits it brings would be a good investment?
  • Does my Intuition believe that the other person can deliver what they’re promising, or is my sixth sense telling me that they’re bluffing – even a little bit?
  • Does this opportunity move me towards my 5-10 year business / life vision?
  • If I were an expert in my field, would I say ‘yes’ to this offer?
  • If your answer is ‘no’ to any of these, then you should think carefully, before saying ‘yes’.

 

So often we say ‘yes’ because we’re lacking clarity over our Big Vision, our Dream Audience, or we don’t have a strategic marketing and visibility action plan. Or maybe we’re just scared of saying ‘no’. But I want to let you in on a secret:

Those who complain about you giving less away for free would probably never have bought from you, anyway. So let them go.

 

Want To Know Why You’re Falling Into The ‘Free For Exposure’ Trap?

Awareness is the first key to change, as Carl Jung said.

Want to know the real reasons why you’re doing it?

How about thinking about a recent ‘free for exposure’ commitment you made, which doesn’t feel right, and then completing the statement below, with at least 7-10 answers:

I did it, because…

Are any of those ‘because’ answers fear-based?

If yes, you need to release those hidden fears, to set yourself free from working for nothing.

Stuck on how to do that? My online course “How To Ditch A Limiting Belief In Under 5 Minutes” is a great help.

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And I’ve got a workbook for you on this.

It contains the must-ask questions that you need to get answers to, before you say ‘yes’ to working for free. I have collected these over the past 15 years of running my business and the mistakes I have made! I’d love to shortcut that learning curve for you.

The energy exchange for this (it’s not a freebie!) is joining my weekly-ish Dare To Dream Bigger newsletter. I hope you’ll love it, but you can opt out at any time, if you don’t.

Get Your Free Workbook:

Download Your Workbook Now

Click the image to read it online or right click this link and choose ‘save as’ or ‘download’ (or similar), so you have it with you, whenever you need it.


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Want To Fix The Free-For-Exposure Habit?

If you’ve got my latest book – Dare To Dream Bigger: The ‘Inside Work’ Handbook For Entrepreneurs & Passionate World-Changers – then you can dive in and get started on key causes of ‘free for exposure’ in the following sections:

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  • Imposter Syndrome – how to set yourself free from feeling like a fraud – hardback page 191 – Kindle: search ‘imposter syndrome’
  • Secondary Gain – the reason why making change can be so hard – hardback page 83 – Kindle: search ‘secondary gain’
  • Getting clarity over your Big Vision, your Dream Audience and the value you add – Step 1 – Kindle: search ‘Step 1’
  • Visibility Action Plan – how to establish yourself as the go-to-expert in your niche – hardback page 177 – Kindle: search ‘Step 3’
  • Connecting with your intuition – hardback page 213 – Kindle: search ‘Intuition’

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Dare To Dream Bigger

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Sick Of Sticky Plasters For This?

Join me for my up-coming mastermind:

“Free For Exposure?”
How to charge what you’re worth, without selling your soul.

It’s a 3-month programme with a one-day workshop in the middle, with only 10 places. You’ll get to deep-dive on the root causes of why you’ve been ‘giving on empty’, discover how to communicate the value you add in ways your dream audience will love, and set yourself free from running your business on fear.

To get on the waiting list for this programme, register here:

Tell Me More About The Mastermind:

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And There’s More: Are You Blocking Your Business Abundance?

[one_third_first]The more we give stuff away for free, especially if we resent it, the more we’re telling the Universe (engineer-approved woo-woo alert!) that we’re happy not to be paid – that we don’t value our work.

This causes us to block our business abundance.

If you’d like to find out whether you’re blocking your business abundance, I’ve got a quiz for you, below, with the option to join me for a 5-day mini-training, to help you spot and clear out those Business Abundance Blocks. Are you in? Click the button below to find out:

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[thrive_link color=’orange’ link=’https://www.clarejosa.com/businessabundancequiz/’ target=’_self’ size=’medium’ align=’aligncenter’]Take The Business Abundance Blocks Quiz[/thrive_link]

 

I’d Love To Hear From You

Have you been falling into the ‘freebie trap’?

What might you do differently now?

How could you set yourself free from the fear that drives us giving on empty?

 

Loved This – Could You Help Spread The Word?

Do you know anyone else who might find this article useful? Please share it with them, wherever passionate world-changers might be hanging out.

With love, Namaste,

Clare Josa, Author, Speaker, ‘Inside Work’ Mentor

P.S. Could you be an ‘introverted entrepreneur’? Take this quick quiz to find out whether you have the 3 hidden strengths that introverts bring to running a small business.

 

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