Liz Wolfe With Liz Wolfe Coaching

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Liz Wolfe, who is with Liz Wolfe Coaching. Welcome.

Liz Wolfe: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice. How you serving folks?

Liz Wolfe: I’m a business coach. I’m based in New York City. And what I do is I coach new entrepreneurs, mostly, mostly new entrepreneurs, to get unstuck so that they can launch and grow an abundant business.

Lee Kantor: So they at go, they’re stuck. Is that is that a yellow flag right at the beginning?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. People get unstuck. Uh, meaning they’re stuck because they say, ah, man, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I don’t know how to do it or I’m too afraid. Or they say, you know, I have this really awesome idea. Or they say, somebody came to me and said, hey, you want to participate in whatever it is and they don’t know how to proceed. Their, their their mindset takes over. They get afraid. They did it once before and it didn’t work last time. It’s like the fourth time trying. So there’s all kinds of ways that people can get hung up.

Lee Kantor: So it really strikes me that I didn’t realize that they would have these issues at the beginning. I would think the beginning is where all the energy and the momentum is.

Liz Wolfe: Well, and that’s can be another part of it. Of course, you could have had a bunch of momentum and really be excited to do it and then had a few failures along the way. So when I say launch and grow an abundant business from, you know, as new entrepreneurs, um, that could be anybody who’s literally doesn’t even know what they want to do, they just want to quit their job, and they just hate their job and don’t want to do that anymore. To somebody that’s even been in their business for maybe three years, and they have tried a few things and it’s very frustrating. You know, they did a lot of free coaching or they tried different products or whatever that is. So there’s a certain amount of quote unquote new entrepreneurs, somebody from like, let’s call it 0 to 3 years.

Lee Kantor: Now, what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Liz Wolfe: Well, my backpack story is that I had a crazy mother in a good way. No, I grew up on a sheep farm. When I was five years old, my mother said, I don’t want to live in the city anymore. And she had zero experience being a farmer. But she moved us out to what became known as the Wolf Family Sheep farm. And that’s right. My last name is Wolf and we were on a sheep farm. Was great marketing for the day. Wolves in sheep’s the game, but we really had to figure out what resources we had and for survival, you know, for money. We had these sheep so we would make products, we would spin wool, we would sell the lamb meat, we would go to festivals. We would take the sheep with us to these downtown Pittsburgh and share them on the spot. There was many ways in which we had to be innovative and creative, and really use our skills to create products that we would turn into money. And so I grew up in an environment that was that all the time. So I the first thing I did out of college was I said, well, I don’t want to get a job, so let me go do this.

Liz Wolfe: And what I did was I opened a store that was selling those products. Now I’m in my you know, it was 22 at the time. The fact was, it wasn’t that authentic for me. I was really doing it to help my mother. And so I was doing it in Connecticut. She was in Pittsburgh. Anyway, it didn’t it didn’t work out. But, you know, every good business coach has to have a good big failure in their past, right? So you can look and go, well, I saw what didn’t work. So let’s figure out what would work. And one of those was developing skills. I became a computer consultant selling CRM systems. Love to help small businesses. I really only realized later, oh, look at all the skills I had that I didn’t know I had, right? So often we overlook those skills that we have because we didn’t learn them in school or something. And it turned out that I had a knack for helping people because I had been through that experience myself, having my own business now 28 years. And my biggest accomplishment is I’ve been married to my husband the whole time I’ve been partners with him in the business. So here we are.

Lee Kantor: And so together you’re doing coaching as well.

Liz Wolfe: He actually still sells the CRM software. It’s called maximizer. It’s a great small business CRM system. Everybody’s heard of Salesforce, but not everybody wants to spend the money on it. So that was a that was a turning point in our business where I said, well, I don’t really want to do the technology anymore. You know, in the 90s, it was really like I’m always reminded of a story I read about the when penicillin was invented, it was incredibly effective. Like you could administer it to people and animals and it would instantly, you know, within 24 hours, get better. Of course, that doesn’t happen anymore. But that was what CRM and technology was like in the 90s. People you don’t you don’t realize that people like, had no idea how to use how how to take their paper systems and put it into a technology. Technological solution. A system that didn’t exist. And still to this day, some people don’t do it, but it’s much more run of the mill now. Everybody knows how to use Excel or whatever. They use Monday.com or something. So but he continues to sell to mostly to financial advisors. That is the the market that’s really well suited for that particular software. And I just got tired of the tech. I just got bored with it. It was fun when it was fun, and it’s more fun to work directly with people.

Lee Kantor: So now in your work, when you’re working with these entrepreneurs that are at some level of stuck. You mentioned something earlier that I’d like to get into a little bit, that you didn’t realize all the skills you had when you were an entrepreneur. You know, at age five, you know, making a wool toy for a kid at a festival. Um, can you talk a little bit about how, like if our listeners says, oh, yeah, you know, I don’t know if I believe that, like, is there a way to kind of audit yourself and to come up with maybe some of the hidden skills you have? Are there some questions you ask, uh, your coaching clients in order to help them discover maybe some of these, uh, little pots of gold they might have just within themselves?

Liz Wolfe: Yes, absolutely. So one of the I believe a myth of entrepreneurship is that you have to be a certain level of, of respected expert or have credibility. And it is true that you it’s important in the beginning to build credibility so that people see you as a credible expert. However, it doesn’t mean you have to have a PhD, or it doesn’t mean that you have to even get certified to be a coach. It doesn’t mean that you need 20 years in the business. What it means is that you look at your own strengths, and this is the part I think that gets overlooked quite a bit, which is everybody always says, well, what’s the problem that you can solve for people? And you don’t have to have any years of experience if you can solve it for them after just doing it for one year. That’s that’s not the point. You don’t have to have your PhD, but that falls flat for me. This. What what problem do you have? What problem do people have that you can solve? I add to that, what problem do people have that you care about solving for them? Because if you don’t care about solving it, then it’s not going to inspire you to get better at solving it. You’re just going to be like, that’s the way, you know? After a while. I used to love teaching people how to use Excel because it’s a kind of complicated program, and it’s really cool when you learn it. After a while, I didn’t care about solving that problem for people anymore. Got got wrote. So everybody has their own personal perspective on what that problem is. And if you care about solving it, you have a perspective on the best way to solve it. And so that is what I think people should really leverage is yes, their skills, their experience, but also their in their their inspiration to help solve that problem.

Lee Kantor: So to kind of, um, like transfer some of your passionate, uh, your passion with your skills and your enthusiasm to solve a problem is more important, I guess, mentally, than just having the ability to solve the problem.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. And through that, you’ll have the incentive to figure out how to solve the problem for the person.

Lee Kantor: Right? Because everything is more aligned.

Liz Wolfe: Yes, absolutely. And I just think people are smarter than they think they are. They’re better than they think they are. They have more experience than they think. And I, I mean, sure, people will come to me and say, well, let’s put it this way. I say, if people ask me, how long have you been in business? It means something to say that I’ve been in business for 28 years. Especially when you hear all the statistics about how businesses fail after five years or whatever that is. However, I have people that I can think back to in my first year of training or coaching that still I hear from. It meant I met a man recently that I hadn’t seen in a while and he said, I still use something you say every single day. And I think, wow, you were in one of the first coaching programs I ever led. And he still uses it to this day. Why? Because he’s listening from a perspective of I want my problem solved. So I’m going to look to this person who’s there, ready, willing and able to solve it for me.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned earlier you use the word abundance and abundance principles, I believe. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?

Liz Wolfe: Yes. It’s one of my favorite topics, as a matter of fact. So abundance means different things to different people. And some, for some people it’s money, but surprisingly fewer than you would think. For some people, it’s freedom. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of creativity. That’s another thing. And why would I be hesitant or have fears around doing anything? Those are scarcity thoughts, scarcity based thoughts. And one of the skills that I’ve developed as a coach is really helping people to be able to make distinctions between when their thoughts are scarcity based versus abundance based. So it’s based in these abundance principles, which, by the way, I didn’t make up, nor did Wayne Dyer, nor did this, you know, the think and grow rich guy 50 years before him or the person that a thousand years ago. Right. These are principles that have been in available to us for literally for thousands of years. And so the skill is being able to make the distinction between what is a scarcity based thought, what is a belief, and then what is an abundance based thought. So for example, some people will say, oh, it’s so hard to start a business. Okay, um, that’s a scarcity based thought. I’m not saying there aren’t challenges to it, but if you go into it saying it’s so hard and I’m going to fail, I’ve done it before. I’m going to fail again. Oh, let me figure out how to not fail again. These are all scarcity based thoughts. So the you you’ll be more effective at what you do when you have more helpful thoughts that are based in abundance principles.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, there’s a lot of, you know, people want to believe that things are easy. And I think this is where even some of the principles of abundance, um, are kind of either misheard or misunderstood. Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’re going to get something. It’s not a magic wand to flip a switch and say, instead of believing, uh, businesses or I failed in the past, I’m going to say every day, I’m not going to fail today or I’m going to be successful today. And just that activity isn’t enough to. Um, maybe it won’t bear the fruit of maybe what you want just because you are kind of using abundance language. So how do you help kind of manage the expectations of some of your coaching clients?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, that’s a really, really great question. And I think this is where you’ve got these devotees of the Law of Attraction, and then you’ve got the the people that are like, well, that doesn’t work. You can’t just sit around and you’re in your front porch and go, I can’t wait today for $1 million to come in the mail. You know, it’s not it’s not that. So one distinction is to notice how helpful are your thoughts in in moving you forward or in being productive. So, for instance, the thought that I don’t know if anybody’s want will pay here. This is one of my I guess you could call it a pet peeve. One of those things. You know who? Um, nobody. Nobody will pay me what I’m worth. That’s a big one that you hear a lot of times. And so the people say, you know, you really got to charge what you’re worth. And I have to tell you that I actually don’t believe in in worth as a. Let me put it to you this way. People don’t sit around and say, you know what? I’m going to hire Liz Wolfe because she’s worth it. Meaning like she she should because she believes in her. I’m not saying it right. They’re they’re sitting around saying, I’m going to hire those, Wolfe, because it’s clear to me that she’s going to solve my problem. They’re not sitting around going, you know what? Because she’s just such an awesome person and she just worth it. I just want to give her some money. Right? You see why? Like we keep thinking it’s about us. It is not about us. It is about them. And so that person who has their thoughts is trying to build themselves up through this idea of, well, if I just visualize it, or if I just convince myself I’m worth it, I’m going to spend time in front of the mirror saying, you know, you deserve it. That’s another one I. Oh, that’s the one. I also that phrase, I deserve it. People don’t give it to you because they deserve it. You know that Liz. She’s she’s I like her. She deserves.

Lee Kantor: Right. She she put.

Lee Kantor: In the time. So here you go.

Liz Wolfe: Here you go. Right.

Liz Wolfe: They’re not thinking about that. And so the the thing about the law of attraction, and I certainly adhere to the principles of it. What gets overlooked is that there’s also a law of resistance. And someday I’m going to make my next million.

Liz Wolfe: Dollars by.

Liz Wolfe: Writing the book about the law of resistance, which probably people don’t want to read. Why? Because it’s going to explain how hard it is.

Lee Kantor: Right?

Liz Wolfe: Not how easy it is.

Lee Kantor: It’s the work part.

Lee Kantor: That people don’t want to do.

Lee Kantor: Right.

Liz Wolfe: And fear is a resistance based thought. I’m afraid to move forward because. And so if you acknowledge that there’s both the law of attraction but also the law of resistance, then you can see why there’s a struggle, that it becomes much more clear. And so you can stand in front of your mirror and say, I’m worth it. I’m I deserve it. And you could still feel feelings of scarcity because you just can’t seem to convince yourself. Or you can be quiet by yourself and close your eyes for the moment and just experience gratitude. You know, just just literally every human being on the planet, you don’t even need to have something to be grateful for. It’s a feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach. You can literally just say, I am grateful and just experience that gratitude. And now what you’re doing, as Wayne Dyer said, was abundance is not something you acquire. It is something you tune into. And when you relate to those moments where you felt and feel that abundance and create that for yourself, that’s where the law of attraction, because when you do that, you feel so excited and so inspired and so motivated, and the fear based conversations don’t come in. And that’s why you’re more effective.

Lee Kantor: Yeah.

Lee Kantor: When I was, um, I’ve coached some people, um, when it comes to especially freelancers or consultants or coaches, when it comes to coming up with a price, you know, that that’s a difficult thing for some people. Um, and one of the things I said to start with is just what’s a number that you can say in a mirror without laughing or feeling weird about, you know, let’s start there and then get some clients there and then just work your way from there. At least you know you’re not going to feel kind of weird about it or like that. You’re, you know, it’s like you said, they feel like, you know, they don’t deserve that price or that rate. Um, but just, you know, let the market decide that.

Liz Wolfe: First of all, I really, really appreciate you saying that because I have said the exact same thing to people where they’ll say, you know, well, other coaches or or other therapists or other video editors or whatever they’re charging, you know, $500 an hour. And then I say, okay, but if you can’t say to somebody and feel confident about $500 an hour, you’re never going to do it. In fact, I had an incident where somebody was trying to sell me their marketing program at some point. You know, everybody’s always trying to sell you their marketing program. And the program was quite expensive. It was $15,000 or something like that for three months, something like that. And the and the program, this was pretty early on in my career in coaching. And he said, I will be able to get you $5,000 a month clients. Now, why would I not have the $15,000? Why would I not spend $15,000 to get $5,000 clients? Presumably, if I got one a month for 12 months, it would be a lot of money. A lot more money than I’d spent. It’s because at the time, I didn’t even think I could sell a $5,000 training or coaching program. So even if they came to my doorstep, I just didn’t have the mindset that I was going to be able to sell a $5,000 coaching program.

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s the that you got to get past that hurdle first, right?

Liz Wolfe: Exactly. And, you know, there’s so much that goes with that. Like even sitting here now, I don’t know, is my program worth $5,000 a month? Right? You know, it’s all all our crazy, crazy talk we have in our head.

Lee Kantor: Right. Well, there there’s a guy I read a lot of of his name, Seth Godin, and he says price is a story. I mean, it’s not prices. There’s lots of things that lots of different prices. I mean, you just have to build the right story around it.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. That’s right. There are coaches that are a lot less expensive than me and a lot more expensive than me. And I found for the for the niche that I have of my new entrepreneurs, that this is something that typically will resonate with people and that they find doable. And so they’ll and yet it’s an investment and it’s something that they’re at stake for. So that’s my balance that I’m looking for.

Lee Kantor: Right. And then you have a track record that they can look at and they can feel comfortable with. Um, you’ve done this now for a bit. Do you have that to, to lean on and then they can make the decision if it’s if they see the value and it’s worth it to them, and they believe that you can help them get what they need, then they’ll, you know, then they’ll sign on. I mean.

Liz Wolfe: That’s.

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s business. That’s and that’s what their business should be, is doing kind of a version of what you’re doing and having all that social proof and having the expertise and the confidence to charge what they want to charge.

Liz Wolfe: That’s right. And, you know, I once charged 50 bucks an hour for coaching. I remember the first time I was like, wow, 50 bucks an hour, you know, because I was jumping up from the 30 that I. Whatever it is. Right. You just you can you increase and and it’s it, it builds upon that’s another abundance principle which is I like to think of it more like you’re building a house than you are going on a journey with some far off destination. The top of some mountain that you’re going to summit someday, right?

Lee Kantor: You’re earning your way up the ladder, but it’s built on your own belief. Like you have to believe you deserve each step of that ladder so that you can get higher and higher on the ladder.

Liz Wolfe: And you’ll you can keep going, and you can go as high as you want, or as stay down low as you want and goes from there.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. So now, um, if do you have any advice or tips you can share when it comes to maybe, I’m sure it’s not the first time somebody’s heard about these kind of abundance principles, but is there some low hanging fruit in individual A listener right now? Some action they could take right now to unlock some of these abundance principles in their own lives?

Liz Wolfe: Absolutely. So I have what I call the three keys to an abundant business. It’s applicable in your personal life as well. I used to long, long ago. It was the three keys to a richer life. And since I’m a business coach, I do three keys to an abundant business. And here’s what they are. Ask powerfully. Give wholeheartedly and receive graciously. So everywhere you look in your life, first of all, all three of those things are within your realm of control. Maybe you only have two years of experience and you feel like, who’s going to hire me? I only have two years of experience. Or maybe you don’t know enough. The quote, connections, the right connections, etc. those are outside of the realm of your control. You can’t change any of that. But what you can do is you can take deliberate and explicit action by number one asking. So are you at the end of your sales calls? Are you asking directly for the sale? Are you asking for referrals? Are you asking for help? Are you asking? There’s I can’t I there’s thousands literally of things. And so when I say ask powerfully what I mean for that is asking specifically. This also relates to vision.

Liz Wolfe: What is your vision. I want to make more money. Me too. But I don’t want to make $5 more. Right. I want to know. I want $100,000. I want to get to 100,000 or 500, whatever your number is. So? So you’re specific. The second part is give wholeheartedly. And the give wholeheartedly is basically, you know, the what they say, you know, give and take is, is is the balance there. And giving is really okay. If you want referrals or you want sales, how can you give that? In other words, can you give a referral to somebody else. Can you? I’ve actually done that on some of my coaching business, um, strategy sessions where I kind of know the person’s probably not going to hire me or they’re not quite the right fit. So I think, who else can I refer them to? I could try to fit that round peg in a square hole, or I could just refer them to someone else and then I’ll get a referral. Remember, when you give something, you’re actually creating more of it in the universe. And the third part is to receive graciously. And of course, the gracious part is with gratitude. But the receiving is where we, most of us, need to do the most work.

Liz Wolfe: Meaning we think we want to have a thousand clients or whatever. You know, let’s not not be silly and not, say, a thousand. We think we want 30 clients, but we aren’t. We’re not in a space to receive it. We think we want our training video to go viral, but we’re not ready to receive that. We think we want money, but when somebody offers us 20 bucks for gas because we drove them to Boston one day. We say no. So there’s so many ways that we don’t receive that. Even if you just worked on that one part of your business or your your personality around receiving it would make a difference for you. So you can start with any of those three things. And even like, I love to give stuff away. I live in New York City and I have a stoop, I live a townhouse and I have a stoop, and I just put stuff on the stoop and people come and take it away. And then my house is cleaner, so nice. So it can be a little like that, right? It’s just like a clearing of it could be letting go of a grudge.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I find it. Um, the mindset shift for me that helped when it came to selling was when I stopped trying to sell anything. But I just tried to listen and see if I could help solve whatever problem they had. And then if I had if what I had could help them, I would share it. But if it didn’t, I wouldn’t share it. You know, it’s just we’re having the same conversation. It’s just the way that I was looking at those conversations changed.

Liz Wolfe: Yes, 100% there. But where the shift in the energy was that you were ready to offer and give in that moment, and if it was a good fit and if not, you know, don’t do it.

Lee Kantor: Right. We can still be friends, you know, like it. I find sometimes salespeople, they just are so focused in making sure they get their pitch in and they tell you everything they can do and how wonderful they are. They stop listening to the other person to understand really what it is, the outcome they desire.

Liz Wolfe: I have a I had an experience, I got a might have even been a setup call meaning like I knew he said can. I was interested in whatever he was selling or whatever it was. And so it was like a call. And so he got on and he started with the spiel and I, I’m a questioner, so I always have a lot of questioner. It drives my husband crazy. I’m like, he says, let’s go. And I’m like, why do we have to go now? Right? It’s always a thing. I always have a question. And so, you know, he was like a couple minutes into it and I started to say, well, what about this? What about that? And he actually got like a little bit upset with me or, you know, brusque with me and said, well, if you just let me finish my pitch then, you know. And I was like, wait a minute, I’m expressing interest in your product right now. And I have questions. He was not listening to me at all, right?

Liz Wolfe: I was like.

Liz Wolfe: Okay, what you’re telling me is I have to sit here for however long it was going.

Liz Wolfe: To be. It’s like those time shares.

Liz Wolfe: Right. Just listening to you. I mean, the last thing I was going to do was buy something from this guy. He didn’t care.

Liz Wolfe: Anything about what.

Liz Wolfe: I had to say.

Liz Wolfe: Or what.

Liz Wolfe: My.

Liz Wolfe: Needs were, because.

Lee Kantor: His boss told him that. You got to say this script and you’re going to say the script, and that’s what, you know, he had in the back of his head.

Liz Wolfe: That’s right.

Lee Kantor: Well, Liz, it has been an absolute joy talking to you today. So much passion and and understanding about coaching. And I imagine that your clients really get a lot out of the conversations you have with them.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. Thank you so much I appreciate it. This is a great conversation.

Lee Kantor: Now is there, before we wrap up, is there a story you can share or maybe that illustrates that? Do you have a client? Don’t name the name, but maybe share the challenge they had. Um, you know, when they came to you and how you were able to help them get to a new level?

Liz Wolfe: Oh, gosh, so many great stories. You know, I, I have, uh, people often ask me, what is the success, you know? Tell me your big successes. And I say, well, it’s it’s a little hard to define it because I, for instance, have a client who decided to publish on Amazon and do do these beautiful word search books on Amazon. And the huge success was she published her first one. Right? She didn’t even sell any of them yet. She just the the work that it took to get there and and so that that I consider to be a great success. And then I have the, you know, the other side, which is that people who have been frustrated, this one woman who’s an education consultant, she was working as a teacher. And, you know, the Department of Education doesn’t it doesn’t sound a bad pay, but it just was not great. And she became an educational consultant, and she made $250,000 in her business in the second or third year she was in business. And so the In both of those cases, the biggest hurdle was the mindset around it. Can I do this? Do people care? Is it am I able to? How can I pull this off? So sure, we talked all about all the skills and everything that it would take to do the productivity part of it, but the most beautiful part is where you have that breakthrough to the other side where you say, wow, I did something that I actually didn’t even think was possible.

Lee Kantor: And they took action. They didn’t. It wasn’t in their head anymore. They were actually, you know, doing the thing.

Liz Wolfe: They were taking action. And I will tell you, this, being a business, being in business, whether it’s new or 50 years into the business, whatever it is, I always like to say it’s the best personal development workshop you’re ever going to participate in. And so being in action is the thing that helps you develop those skills and to have you get past those mindset barriers.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation. What is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Liz Wolfe: Liz Wolfe Coaching.com. But that is Wolfe with an E. Unlike the big Bad Wolf, it’s wolf with an E. Liz Wolfe Coaching.com. And actually, I have a quiz on there. It’s a short, fun quiz that will help you to figure out what your CEO leadership style is. And of course, it comes with some content that will help you to figure out in areas that you feel stuck how you might get unstuck.

Lee Kantor: Well, Liz, thank you again for sharing your story, doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: So are you. So thank you so much for having me on.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.