VALUE with Lena West: Scaling service, marketing with integrity, and moving beyond “girlboss”
Julie and Casey sit down with Lena West (a unicorn in the business coach space) to talk what it means to stand in your value. Along the way we rehash the Girl Boss era, dig into integrity and being of service, and hear about finding a medical team that actually works for you.
TOP TAKEAWAYS:
The Girl Boss movement and the “create more places for women in leadership” movement aren’t the same thing. Girl Boss was about branding and youth and hustle, but not much beyond that. It was a formula more than a movement. When you give someone a formula (in business or, in voice work) you take their individuality out of the equation.
Predatory business practices like false scarcity are both ridiculous (you sold out of virtual seats? really?) and damaging. Start doing the work to get people to trust you so that they want to voluntarily, not from a manipulation standpoint, but voluntarily do business with you and give you their money from a wholehearted place instead of FOMO.
Maybe it’s less about charging “what you’re worth” and more about charging for the impact or transformation you are contributing to your clients. You’ll know what makes you feel compensated AFTER you do it for too little money. Transformational pricing is less about the YES than it is about reminding folks that YOUR TIME and YOUR ENERGY are not free.
LESSON: Don’t try to Miss Cleo your audience — on not trying to predict how your audience will respond.
Lena L. West’s razor-sharp business acumen is the well-hewn result of more than a decade of hands-on experience in digital transformation and strategic business growth. As an award-winning serial entrepreneur, writer, keynote speaker, inclusive business growth strategist, independent filmmaker, and grant maker, this truth-telling business advisor is often referred to as an “entrepreneur’s secret advantage”. She shows experienced, self-funded, service-based founders and entrepreneurs how to learn, love and leverage their inner CEO and build a business that loves them back.
Lena is the Founder of CEO Rising®, a virtual business accelerator dedicated to transforming principled solopreneurs into CEOs by providing them with the three growth tools they need most: coaching, community, and cash...so they can build ethical, profitable, and sustainable businesses.
CEO Rising® was intentionally founded to disrupt the landscape of business coaching by providing affordable access to business coaching -- all without resorting to the prevalent, yet commonly accepted, predatory practices of false scarcity, false urgency, and marketing manipulation.
Lena is also the visionary creator of CEO DNA®, a personalized inventory that uncovers a founder's specific CEO leadership archetypes and style.
She has written for American Express, Fast Company and Entrepreneur and has spoken for notable organizations such as American Express, Wharton School of Business, SCORE, National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and Syracuse University. She sits on the Advisory Board of The Feminist Coaching Academy and is an Alum Ambassador of The Op Ed Project. An honorary highlight of her career was speaking about diversity, equity, and inclusion in digital media on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations.
Lena’s internationally acknowledged expertise has led to winning several business awards, among them: The Hall of Femme, BuzzFeed’s Most Influential Influencers, The Women’s Congress’ Entrepreneurial Champion for Women in Business and NCWIT’s Entrepreneurial Hero.
Her life’s work is to prove once and for all that service-based businesses can indeed scale. Her mission is to expand what's possible for self-funded founders of service-based businesses by pairing reinvented coaching, community, and funding models with increased digital media representation.
http://CEORising.co
https://LenaWest.com