💌 "I am not a bank" — Strategies for Getting Corporate Clients to Pay on Time

Hi Friends,

“I don’t get on the airplane—and definitely not the stage—unless all invoices are paid in full.”

When my friend and fellow keynote speaker Joey Coleman said this to me over coffee, I started drilling him for details:

Really?! How do you have the nerve to say that to a speaking client?! How do you avoid caving in to make sure their event doesn’t fall apart if they haven’t paid in time? What about clients who work for highly bureaucratic companies that insist on their “standard” net-120 terms?

🧡 Paying Subscribers: You’re invited to join a live podcast taping coming up on Tuesday, February 13 at 10:30 a.m ET with Joey on his mantra for getting paid on time by corporate and speaking clients, “I am not a bank.” Together, we’ll explore this topic—and his billing best practices—in delightful detail.

🔗 The link to register and attend is below the paywall in the footer of this email. 👇

• Want to join us? Upgrade your membership here

Now onto this week’s round-up + Plus extra goodies over the paywall rainbow at the end . . .

⚙️ Tips & Tools

In this week’s Free Time conversation with business strategist Michelle Warner, she shared three small business stages most relevant to tiny business owners—adapted from HBR’s Five Stages of Small Business Growth:

1. Validate—the business model by looking for product-market-founder fit

2. Sell—repeatable and predictable marketing and sales

3. Foundation—process, team, and culture

I particularly appreciate her emphasis on product-market-founder fit, because so often we leave the founder-fit piece out of business model design—until we burn out or want to burn it all down (the all-too-familiar state that opens the Free Time book).

✅ Try this next: We also spoke about her approach to relationship-based marketing. Take five minutes a day (or even each week to start) and reach out to one person across any of these four themes: thank you’s (be specific!), connections, asks, and catch-ups.

Listen to the full conversation here »

📆 Upcoming Events

🎙 February 13 — live podcast taping with Joey Coleman on his strategies for billing corporate and speaking clients.

💻 February 21 — Office Hours hang: ask me anything about a question or challenge in your business, and get extra input from fellow Heart-Based Business owners.

🎙 March 7 — live podcast taping with Todd Sattersten is the publisher and owner of Bard Press, on strategies for hitting The Magic Number of book sales. This will be a follow-up conversation to our Free Time podcast episode launching on February 16.

🎟️ Want to join us for any or all of the above? We’d love to have you! Upgrade to a paid subscription here »

💬 Quote

“I have learned to be ruthlessly myself.”
—Gwyneth Paltrow, The goop Podcast — 15th Anniversary Episode

💭 Questions

On a scale of 1-10, how fully do you express your true self through your business? What would it look like to inch that number up by one or two points? How would that feel? What would “ruthlessly yourself” look like? How might that feel?

📝 Permission

Take a chance this week to express yourself just a little bit more than you usually would. Take a small risk and see what happens.

🍩 New at Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h with Jenny Blake

🎤 The one thing I forgot to say to my speaking career these last four years . . .

🎙 Recent Episodes

Free Time:

• 264: 🦧 What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client (Part One)

• 263: Finding Product-Market-Founder Fit and Launching Downhill Sales Snowballs ☃️ through Relationship-Marketing with Michelle Warner

• 262: 🪜Climbing Down the Entrepreneurial Ladder — Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h

• 261: Cringe-Free Launches and Evergreen Sales Considerations with Anne Samoilov

• Subscribe wherever you listen here »

Pivot:

• 359: “You can’t give what you don’t have” — Expecting Greatness While Practicing Acceptance with Nataly Kogan

• 358: Crossing the Cringe Chasm when Taking Career and Creative Risks with Henna Pryor

• 357: Addressing the Mental Health Challenges of Doing Humanitarian Work with Dimple Dhabalia

• Subscribe wherever you listen here »

Thank you for being here reading and listening!

❤️ With Gratitude,

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P.S. Extra Goodies Over the Paywall Rainbow 🌈💰

🔐 Thank you to our generous paying subscribers who help sustain Time Well Spent! Upgrade to unlock this week’s make-you-smile memes as a token of my gratitude ☺️