Does embracing my Transcendent Message mean that I won’t get clients as easily?

The deep fear I hear from clients, and potential clients, is that by choosing to express their Transcendent Message, the story of what has emerged from their lifetime of experience in the world, that they will be resigning themselves to making less money than if they created and offered a more Transactional Message.

(If you missed it, here’s the previous note I wrote about the Transcendent Message: https://isabelparlett.com/thoughts-the-transactional-message-vs-the-transcendent-message/)

And my response is, “it’s complicated.”

Just as we all have a choice in this world to show up authentically as who we are, in our full glory, or to present a more carefully curated image to the world, we have a choice to speak what is alive and on fire inside of us, or to present what we think is a more palatable or digestible version of what we really think.

And both have consequences.

When we chose to present ourselves as a kind of cardboard cutout, Photoshopped, glossy, conventionally appealing, we chose a kind of safety. “I won’t offend anyone, I won’t rock the boat.” But we also end up disappearing into a crowd, one of fifteen women business coaches in the room offering people a path to a six-figure business. What we lose is the chance to be seen as who we are and therefore the chance for anyone to fall in love with us.

When we chose the more difficult path – the revelation of who we are, what we believe – we do risk upsetting and offending people. People who don’t see the value in what we do. People who don’t agree with what we do. We risk confusing people, introducing ideas and elements outside of people’s comfort zones, people’s paradigms. But we also gain the possibility of being recognized by the people who yearn for what we bring forward. We gain the possibility of our words and our work resonating in the hearts of the people we are best equipped to serve. We gain the possibility of finding meaning and fulfilling our purpose.

What happens then translates differently for different clients.

Some of my clients, during or in the wake of doing message work, experience immediate and long-lasting shifts in their ability to get good clients. There businesses grow steadily but with increasing momentum. Their confidence expands, their ability to communicate expands, and both result in more ease and speed bringing on new business.

For some clients, it’s less about the volume of business changing as it is the quality of new business changing. Of working more and more with those great fit clients.

For some it takes longer. Depending on their level of comfort being visible, their willingness to put their message out in the world, their connection to their audience, there may be a trial and error phase, a phase of refining the public language to land with the desired audience without losing its potency. Of figuring out where the new audience can be found. Of finding the bandwidth to keep reaching out, sharing insight, and making offers even when the first, the second, or the third efforts don’t go exactly as planned.

And a few clients get cold feet. They feel uncomfortable in that trial and error phase, they feel vulnerable putting their passion and heart on the line so nakedly. They get charmed back towards the Transactional Message, towards more conventional direct marketing. They forget that who they are is far more compelling than a slick, overproduced persona.

So, does embracing a Transcendent Message mean you’ll make less money?

No.

You may appeal to less of a mass audience. But you will without question appeal more powerfully to the audience that gets you.

And it’s a powerful response to your presence and words that generates your good fortune.

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