Ep54 Mary Shakun & Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD - The Secret to Landing Million-Dollar Clients

Mary Shakun  0:00  
It is so much easier to find a client and have him pay you 1 million or 3 million than it is to find a client to give you 10,000 or less

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  0:10  
you want the clients that call you to keep growing to be excited to go and just be alive.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:21  
Hey, hey, welcome to podcast where dreams meet determination and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to unlock your way with SDK, let's unlock your path to success together. Hey, friends, it's Suzanne here, and I'm so excited to share something incredibly special with you, after the overwhelming response to my February coaches in conversation, this conversation really stood out with two of my mentors, Dr Dorothy, Martin Neville and Mary chacoon, two absolute powerhouses in the world of coaching, personal transformation and soul aligned leadership, and honestly, everybody wanted more, more of them. So here it is, and I'm thrilled to announce that these special podcast episodes featuring these ongoing conversations, the women who've not only helped shift my mindset, my energy, elevating my clarity, and all the things I'm doing as a coach, including my income, these women don't just talk the talk. They live it, their wisdom, their presence, their depth. It's transformative. And it's not just changing my life and my business. My hope is that it creates massive shifts for you as well, whether you're a coach, a leader, or someone simply craving more alignment, truth and purpose to what you do, you're not going to want to miss this. So hit subscribe, follow along and join me for these powerful, raw and engaging, inspiring conversations that could really change and shift something for you. Let's go deeper. Let's grow together, and let's have a little fun doing it along the way. I'll see you in the first episode. Let me just brag on you, just a little bit. Dr, Dorothy Martin Neville has written eight books. She is a transformational coach. My dog says, Hi, Dorothy. And she has worked with leaders of fortune, 500 companies, entrepreneurs and her own journey is a story in itself, from Catholic nun to international flight attendant to psychotherapist to living in the islands, teaching energy medicine and hosting retreats and now a transformational coach for leaders, and we're going to put Dorothy's leadership assessment and report in the chat. Feel free to take that at your convenience. Welcome Dorothy to coaches in conversation. Thank you, darling. It's good to be here. You're so welcome. You're so welcome. Well, let's start off with two years ago, when I met you, I was going through my own personal upgrade in my business trying to figure out where I fit in the coaching space, and you said something to me during a networking event in a breakout room, and I don't know if you even remember this or not, but you said that you saw something in the way that I had led that meeting, and you wondered if I ever saw myself as a leader of my own group or community or running events. And I was like, Hmm, no, not really, not more than what I'm doing right now. And I wonder if that ability of yours to see people's journey has really helped you in your coaching practice.

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  4:19  
Oh, god, yeah. It's helped me my coaching practice. You know, I was a psychologist in practice for 20 plus years, and it also helped me see through my patients, see through their defenses, see through the masks they present, see through all of the the defenses they throw at you, you know? So it's when you have that skill, and I think all of us are capable of having it, yeah, it means being so comfortable in your own skin that you can take a look at somebody else's Yeah, and it's truly being present with somebody and seeing who they are,

Suzanne Taylor-King  4:54  
yeah. Well, thank you so much for seeing me at that time. Um, and let's talk a little bit about the personal upgrade required because you've had your own journey in the last two years of upgrading your own pricing, right, uh, while helping me do that. And what I love about this piece of it is that you are doing this work for yourself. You know, at your own level of upgrading, while you were helping me upgrade, there's something so authentic and real about having a coach who's actually or call you a coach, a mentor, a guide for me, and you were actually doing that work too. So let's talk a little bit about going from, you know, $25,000 a year for your coaching to 100 and what that looked like for you. Well,

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  5:52  
you know, I started out because, you know, as I said, I started out as a psychologist. Well, I started many things from an orphanage all the way up, but in professionally, starting out as a as a therapist, and having the audacity to raise my feet every few years, and then as a coach, starting out at 25,000 because at that point in time, 18 years ago, I thought that was a huge amount of money, right? But it was what the going rate was. And then maybe 10 years later, realizing that more people had up leveled, had up leveled. So I went from 25 to 35 and then it went from 35 to 50, and I was at 50 for golly at maybe four years, something like that. I'm guessing about four years or so at 50,000 and then stepped back and realized, when I looked at all the people I had met who were coaches, what their training was, what their skills were, what they were offering, and how much personal process they had done, which To me, is huge as a coach. So how much personal process they had done. I realized, wait a minute, I'm more on the higher level of qualifications. I've got more experience. I have founded five companies at this point, LLCs 501, c3, and S core, that I had a lot to bring to the table. And I also realized that the more we ask of people, the more we end up asking of ourselves. And if I'm going to be asking that of you, I've got to be ahead of you in growth. I've got to be ahead of you in personal development. I've got to be ahead of you in professional development. So the challenge to me was, if I up leveled my clients, I'm going to be up leveling myself. Yeah, that was exciting. I love personal growth. I love professional growth. That was exciting for me to do. And also I realized that when clients pay more money, they become more invested. Yeah, and you reach a level where, as I'm seeing, the more you work with multi million dollar clients, the more they're frightened about money, which doesn't have to make an ounce of sense. As a child growing up in the housing projects in the inner city, to me, having no money is you're eating spaghetti or hot dogs until Friday, when dad gets paid again, right? But no money can also mean I've got several million invested in many places, but I don't have any cash. Fluency, yeah, and you end up beginning to see through the stories, and you start to help your people through their stories, which you can't do if you haven't confronted your own your own stories around money, your own stories around ability, your own stories around letting go and moving forward. And to me, the more up leveling you do, the more you call yourself to get better at your craft, the more up leveling you do, the higher level of client, the higher level of expectation you bring in. So it becomes this wonderful catch 22 of I want better clients. I need to be a better coach. I want whatever it is you're doing, right? I want to bring more skill. I need to bring in people who need increased skills, right? I don't work with somebody who's I'm thinking maybe I sort of kind of want to start a business. That was my therapy days these days are I already have it, and now I'm going forward. So you have to look at who you want to become, as well as what you want to do, and who's going to call you to do

Suzanne Taylor-King  9:47  
that. Well, if it's not yourself, I don't know who's going to call it. Nobody's going to call you to do that. And I'd love to know a little bit about what's required. You know, certification, wise, education, wise, you know all of these things that we measure. You know good coaching or good consulting, or it could be video creation or editing. What's that? What's that next level for you? Now there, there is a difference. I remember the days of getting one certification after another, because I didn't feel good enough to charge people or help people. Oh, I need this one more thing, this one more thing, and then I'll be ready, and then I'll be ready. But there's a difference in intentionally deciding what is required so that I can charge more. What is required of me? Education, wise, skill wise. You know, maybe it's your website appearance, maybe it's your social media appearance. Maybe you need to write a book. Maybe it is another certification. What does that look like? You know, to look at it from that perspective instead of, oh, I don't feel good enough. I need one more thing.

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  11:10  
I think there's two sides to that. I think you can get caught up in spending your life accumulating certifications. The real gift you bring to people is who you are, your experience, and then the education. I do believe folks need to be certified in whatever their their skill is, right? Not everybody in the world. Thank God. As a coach, there's many other skills that are needed out here, and so becoming educated in your particular expertise is phenomenal. After that, it's your experience in it that makes you the expert. You know, nobody has said to me, not one of my clients has said to me, what was your cue in college? All right, not one of them has said, What college did you go to? All of that was pretty irrelevant. It's, do you have the skills I need to get me where I want to go? Yeah, and those skills aren't academic. There's so much more, so much more of what is your experience, and who are you, and how

Suzanne Taylor-King  12:18  
well do you work with people?

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  12:21  
Yeah, if you don't treat them with respect, you're not going to have them.

Suzanne Taylor-King  12:27  
Yeah. And Jeremy asked a great he he has this great way of verbalizing things. He said. So I'm asking, What does a provider need to feel qualified versus what a client needs to see, hear, feel and realize about themselves to establish that authority to charge more. Thank you. Jeremy, great verbalization, yeah, Jeremy,

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  12:57  
because the fact is, a provider could have every skill under the sun and still not feel qualified. Yes, so it's and again, if you don't feel qualified, how are you going to support somebody and call them forward to a place you've never allowed yourself to go?

Suzanne Taylor-King  13:14  
Yeah, I love that. Tony, could we bring I see that Mary's here? Could we bring Mary on

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  13:20  
Mary story. Mary story is wonderful. Yes,

Suzanne Taylor-King  13:24  
hi Mary. Welcome to coaches in conversation. I

Mary Shakun  13:28  
apologize for being late. I had some overwhelming meetings today. So where should I start? Suzanne? Well,

Suzanne Taylor-King  13:38  
I wanted to tell everybody who you are. So Mary is the original million dollar coach, founder of the million dollar boardroom. She's been a mentor to me for the past year. Incredible influence on me and Dorothy as well. And I want to just say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for pouring into me like you have and it's been so incredible to have your influence in my life, and I love if you're willing to share the story of your first million dollar client.

Mary Shakun  14:23  
Yeah, that's my favorite story. So it's mine too, because it goes to the point that this is not rocket science. I think it goes to the point of, who do you need to become in order to get over there? You're here. You're this person today. You know, but who do you need to become? What do you need to change about yourself, your belief in yourself, your confidence, how you speak, how you deal with people, how you express authority, even though you might feel what's going on with me? I. Don't have authority to do this inside, you know. So let me share a story. So it was 2008 my husband had died in 2001 he lost over $100 million got leukemia, died, and left the family broke, and then my youngest daughter jumped out the window to her death six or seven years later, in 2008 and I could she was schizophrenic and I was unable to concentrate. I lost my job in corporate America, because if you ask me my name, I was like, give you a blank stare and say, who are you? Anyways, so here I am in New York, living on my social security, which will not pay my rent, something in all clean houses. I'll become a professional organizer. Get out of my head, into my hands, do something different. So my oldest daughter's lawyer, and she was out in the Persian Gulf Bahrain at the time, and she says, Mom, why don't you come out to Bahrain and visit me for Christmas. I said, what? I can't even go to Starbucks for a cup of coffee right now, much less go to Bahrain for Christmas. She said, I'll give you gift you the ticket. So she gifted me the ticket, and off I went. And I arrived on a Thursday night, because out in that part of the world, the Friday and Saturday is their weekend, like Friday is the Sabbath and Saturday is that our Play Day. So I arrived on Thursday night, and she hands me a box of stationery. And I said, I'm not going to be looking for a job out here, right when it was a box of stationery. And she said, open it. And it was a box of flyers. Mary chacoon will present a workshop on Saturday. Now this is Thursday night when we're talking the immediate following Saturday on how to live a fearless life. Well, I freaked out. I had never done a workshop, and she says, You can do this. I can't support you. You have no money, and I have student debt and yada yada, and I can't I said I didn't ask you to support me. I can well, support myself. I'll find something to do. So anyway, I said, What am I going to talk about? You know, so so little time to to prepare when people spend weeks and weeks preparing to present a workshop. So anyways, she had organized the venue. A friend who owned a local hotel. Our manager of the local hotel gave us the dining room, and when I arrived at the hotel, there was a big photograph of Mary how to live a fearless life if I wasn't freaking out before. I'm freaking out now, and in the car out to the venue, I said, but I was almost kind of the go to person in corporate America, regardless of whether I wrote at the C level or Secretary Mary. I want to be a vice president or the senior vice president. How can I do that kind of thing? Or I want to send my kids to Harvard or so and so is coming in, and I need to entertain them. Where should I entertain them? So on the way out. I said, Well, how much, if somebody wants me to coach them up the ladder in corporate in the corporate world, how much should I charge? $200 a session, $300 a session. Now, remember, this was Christmas, 2008 and she stops for a moment, and she puts down her best poker face, and she said, Are you crazy? She says, Mom, you've really daft. She said, This is what you do. She your husband, because my husband forged his signature. My signature on papers to release the monies he was in venture capital. It's a whole other story. She said, Mom, your husband took your money and lost it. Then your daughter, youngest daughter jumped out the window, and you're still standing, so yes, you can do this. And she said, This is what you do. You put on your best poker face, you curl your toes in your shoes, and you spit out, I have a million dollar program. I have a program for 10 months, and the cost is $1 million and then you zip it, because if you open your mouth yet again, you'll unsell Everything you're sold. And that is my featured article on my LinkedIn. So did after the after the workshop. This guy came up. He was from Boston, working in Dubai, and people came from like, 500 people showed up, and I had no money, and she charged $200 a head for four hours. I ended up with $10,000 cash after that. And this guy came up, and he was very grand, and up across from Boston, had gone to Oxford and Cambridge, and you know the accent and the attitude. And he said, Mary, that was great. Are you a coach? So I wasn't a coach. So I said, Well, how can I support you? Was my quick response when he said, I'm an investment banker. I went to Harvard. I come from a very illustrious Boston family, and I have three black marks, or two black marks against me where I work, and if I get the net another. And I'm out and I want to be a partner in the store or this investment banking firm. Can you help me do that? I said, Sure, I can help you. And even though, you know, I had a master's degree in math, I worked as a secretary at a very similar, posh investment banking company when I first arrived in New York, and I stayed there for three years, but I always had an uncanny sense of watching how people play the game and all the the politics, the inner the inside politics that go on in an office, but who becomes partner, who gets this bonuses and all of that. So I suggest I can help you. I said, I can we? Can we can start and I can help you reverse your relationship with your boss and get a cure start and start from fresh Oh. He says, that would be wonderful. When can we start? I said, Well, I was already like, this was the Saturday, but I was thinking ahead. I wouldn't have a clue how to approach this client? Well, in God's name, would I start? I haven't worked in investment banking for like 30 years, so I needed 10 days to put a program together. In that 10 days, I reached out to managing partners in investment banks in America, in Singapore, in England. I didn't know them. Some of them. I knew of some, but I really didn't know any of them personally. And 10 of them came to my help sending me federal Lex packages of materials. This is your this is where you start. This is what you say. This is how you do it. Call me. You need help. And that was how I started. Wow. So on his way out of the dining room, or, you know, the conference room, he said, Oh, by the way, Mary, how much? How much do you charge? Here it comes. So Mary crowds her toes in her shoes. I put on my best poker face. Very hard for me to do, because I'm very giggly, and I said, I have a program. It's 10 months, and it's a million dollars. And he scratches his head, and he stops to think, and he looks around and he what, you know he's thinking, and you could see him thinking, and oh, he says, no problem. You have my business card. Send me your banking details. I'll buy you the money. And I said, Okay, and we'll start one week from Monday. So like 10 days later we started, but I had you only need to be one session, one step ahead of your client, yeah. So I had all these managing partners in America helping me, you know, get this kind together. He became partner on time, and took a lot of work, you know, we dressed him, redressed him, taught him etiquette, how to speak to his peers, how to he's, he had a PhD, not and when I say this, I'm, I'm talking slang English. He had a PhD and in in book smarts, but nothing stupid in street smarts. So anyway, he sent me two more people. They sent me two more people, and so on and on and on and in 2015 I decided, hmm, I better learn how to do this from scratch instead of, you know, without referrals, yeah, in 2015 I there was no AI at the time, and AI has cut down on this research time from 100 hours to five minutes. Really, yes, yes. I researched my prospects. Like, where would I find them? I searched magazines, articles, YouTube, how do they speak? I searched YouTube to see how do they speak. Like in Ireland, we would say a baby is is cute. Here they would say baby is beautiful, but cute in Ireland means cute or shrewd, like a fox. So you know difference in languages and that kind of stuff. So in 2015 I was also pushing the envelope from 1 million to 3 million to see if I could do it. But five hours of research every day, and on the first the first agenda, I do not keep a journal, I would be afraid I'd die and somebody would find it.

Mary Shakun  24:21  
I wrote on a scrap of paper. It's January, the first 2015 by January the first 2016 I will have between three and seven clients pay me $3 million each. And bingo, it took 16 months. So by the end of the year, I had four, and I think a four, and then it by May I had the other three. Then in 2016 I did the same research with the women. Now, women have what I like to call even the managing partners, even those worth millions of dollars. Bagley. Syndrome and the bag lady syndrome, me is that they are fear, especially the ones who are single and single are divorced, they all fear they're going to end up under a bridge, like under the Brooklyn Bridge, with all their bags attached to them and no money. And that is their biggest fear. And so it's very difficult to take. It would take a year of coaching to get a woman beyond that syndrome. So anyway, I didn't get any women at all. I got my seven men. Men pay more easily, more readily. Women will not part, not the most. So last year, I got my first woman to give me a million dollars. I have a program called live a big life now. And what that is about is if you want to be a global player on the world stage, I can get you there. But she was an ARS, and daddy paid the million dollars, and there was many more of daddy's millions behind that. So she didn't have that syndrome, you know, but that was the only female I ever had.

Unknown Speaker  26:06  
Wow. So

Mary Shakun  26:10  
I use the money for charity. I live a very minimalist life. People come into town and say, Where are your high use? I said, it's New York. Everybody wears sneakers. They shouldn't die. Yes, you know, so it's funny

Suzanne Taylor-King  26:24  
that's one of the things that's really amazing about you, is the you said something to me about being approachable but not accessible, that that ups your your value. And I know a lot of people in this room have heard me say that at different times that you are so approachable and and warm and Dorothy, same exact thing, approachable, kind conversational. But that doesn't mean that you give away time with you, coaching with you, information with you, without somebody being a client. So it's that accessibility thing that's really important. As you up level

Mary Shakun  27:14  
I have in the in in 2017 or so, a friend of mine was very anxious that his friend who had just paid rich Litvin $20,000 meet me. I said, if he has, you know, why does he want to meet me if he just graduated from rich Litvin? And he said, I don't know. Let's see how it goes. So we got on a call the minute we run zoom the the guy, James, you know, started Mary, how, how, how? I said, whoa. Who are you? What do you want? You know, introduce yourself. What's the purpose of this call? It's not this, not a bit Mary's brain call. I charge, you know, $5,000 if you want to pick my brain and hit a dirty cab, a dirty t shirt. So I said, first of all, I said, I charge money for this. Oh, I have no money. I just paid Richard. And he said, When I get my first monies, I'll send you $3,000 to your charity anyway. So to make a long story short, I gave him three hours of everything I like. It's not rocket science. You have to have clarity around who your ideal client is. Clarity around their problems, understand them, know where they are. Are they married? Are they divorced, or you know their position. You have to have, you have to have so much knowledge about them. Anyway, I give them three hours, and after the three hours, I never got a thank you note. And days went by no thank you note. And after 10 days, I wrote to Nate my friend, and said, hey, you know, I give three hours to your friend. Yeah, you didn't even get a thank you. And so two minutes later, of course, Nate got on to James, and two minutes later, I had a note from James. This is Mary. I'm so sorry for the delay, but I was waiting for the 1.5 million to pop into my bank account in Canada on Monday. It's on Route. So in the three hours that he spent with me, I was able to empower him to go out and find the two clients and to close them, which is more important? Well, I think leads, but if you can close them, leads are no good. Well,

Suzanne Taylor-King  29:24  
well, something both of you do very, very well is you choose your clients. While you do get both of you referrals and introductions, you're also intentionally researching who those people are and saying that one, that one, that one. And that isn't really a technique you can maybe, I guess, you can teach the research piece of it, but something both of you have said. To me, and I'd love both of your opinions on this is when you do find someone that you've researched, and you know you could help when you meet that person by whatever means possible. And I know both of you have gone places where you knew that person was going to be Mary. You sat at a Starbucks one time waiting for somebody you research Dorothy. I know you went to an event on purpose because there was somebody there that you wanted to meet, which required an investment of time and money on both of those occasions and when you get to open your mouth to that person, you have to tell them what you know about them and how you can help very boldly, because you might only have two minutes.

Mary Shakun  30:56  
I had this conversation with somebody last week, and I said, you know you have to when you're very shy and you're introverted and you don't know what to say, or, oh my god, how am I going to say this? Or, you know, what am I going to say to this person? I really need this try. And the more anxious you are inside, because you need the money, or you need whatever. You know, it's more difficult for you to spit it out and to speak articulately. It really is. And people get themselves tied up in knots, trying to make an impression, trying to super impress the other person. Don't try to impress anybody. Just be your authentic self. You know, I went to Whole Foods many that year that I was doing looking for the $3 million client who was Christmas. I had my grandson with me. It was raining or snowing. I was dressed down. We got wet going over, and we're in the payout line, and it was candy. You know that last line they have candies and lollipops, and the kid was looking for this and that and the other and this gentleman behind me said, no, no, no, you have enough. You can't have any more. I'm Irish. So he always my accent. Always gets a comment here and there, and he says, Where are you from? I said, I'm from Ireland. And he says, Oh, I would love to chat with you. Would you like to have coffee with me? He said, You go and grab a seat in the cafe at Whole Foods, and I'll get the coffee. So we did. We started talking, and I ended up with my $3 million client. You

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  32:21  
never know where they're going to come from. Yeah, you never know.

Mary Shakun  32:25  
That's it. You never know. And you have to be prepared. So somebody asked me, I said, you have to, if, when you get all tied up and not inside, you have to sort of change your identity in here. Meaning, who do you need to be? You know, you have to imagine you're the queen of England and that you know it all, and that you are going to tell this person how to run their business, how to live their life, how to undo all the mistakes they made in order to get their life on track. Yes, all about identity,

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  32:58  
yeah. And it's also none of us know everything about everything, and so you can feel really small because you don't or you can recognize what you do know. And as you get to know somebody, you get to know what it is they're looking for. And when you already go in with I only do this, you've closed off, because it may be that they need something you hadn't even thought about, that you're halfway there, and by the time you were with them, as Mary did, you can be fully there. You can know so much more because you took the time to grow a little bit more. And I think one of the things she really stresses always the is, who do you want to become? Who do you need to become to work with the people you want to work with? Because we've got to keep growing and learning all the time, and we're not talking about certifications. Yeah, you know is, what do they need so that I can provide that for them? And you're going to discover you already know so much if you've already chosen to keep becoming what do I need to become, then you've kept that going. Becoming somebody even more isn't all that big a stretch. It's just more of more of the same, more growing, more expanding and more expanding your worldview. Focus on your limitations, or recognize how much you do know what your experience is, and be aware that even if somebody needs something from you, and you've already done it 12 times, they may need it in a way you've never done it before, they may need something more than what you've done before. You can go there, if you're willing to keep going and growing, you can keep getting there, because we can't stop. There's always, unfortunately, so many more situations showing up that we got we have to grow into. But

Suzanne Taylor-King  34:52  
it's energetically, Could you could you both speak a little bit to one? What's required energetically, you know, personal presence being wise to become that person who does not give a shit. Pardon my French, if the person across for them, from them says yes or no, you're confident enough to know you can help them and if they don't want it, I don't care. How do we get to that level of energetics, with our boldness, with our conversations? What's required? Well, it certainly,

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  35:44  
you've certainly got to start, Mary, why don't you take this? I could go just I could think of six different angles to go at.

Mary Shakun  35:53  
I think when life deals just so much shit, become immune to what other people think when my husband lost $100 million and we had a house in the country and a private jet and several cars and the children in the most exclusive schools in the world, and that money, that whole thing, it Sunday morning, he asked me if I wanted a scotch. He said, sit down. I need to talk to you. I said, I could. You need to talk to the ones a skeleton. He was Egyptian Muslim. They're not supposed to drink. But he loved his Johnny Walker, black. He said, We need to talk. I said, Well, you know, yesterday I checked everything. Everything was fine. The house was standing. The kids are in school, you know, you're okay. Health wise, I'm okay. Health advice. He said, we're broke, you know. And within three weeks of that, I had no phone. I had to gather quarters or pennies to turn into quarters to make a phone call, and no food. By the same token, with all of that, said, Not one person came and said, Mary, are you okay? Wow,

Unknown Speaker  36:54  
not one.

Mary Shakun  36:59  
I'm sure my husband went to food pantries many times. Because now that I look back, you know when you're going through it, you miss a lot. But I'm sure he went to food pantries, because now when I look back and I was thinking of the food he brought home, it's not the stuff we normally buy, I would normally buy. So he must have gone to a food pantry to collect it, to get it. That's how badly off we were. But by the sick token, while all of that was going on, I had three children in school and private boarding schools, two in Switzerland, one here in America. I was paying $200,000 a year plus for education, and I was able to keep them in the same schools as if nothing had happened, even though we had no food on the table at home. Wow. And they all nothing interrupted their education, as if, you know, I didn't allow anything to interrupt their education through through university. What's

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  37:50  
the adaptability? Look at the absolute adaptability Mary has, and that, I think that's a huge trait that we bring into what we do. I mean, Mary adapted, as she continues to in in all of the philanthropic work she has done, all the charity she has done, because she's such a loving, giving woman, you know, but at the same time, she knows who she is, yeah. So when you when you ask me, my first thought is, you've got to be so comfortable in your own skin that no matter what happens, you know, you're going to be okay. And it doesn't we. We've both been married. I can't imagine going through the things she's been through, you know, but I was raised in an orphanage and then adopted and raised in the housing projects and not allowed to live in the house for three years. I lived on the streets and then moved into this home and kept my mother and brothers and sisters alive. So we can go through all of these situations, and we can look at we all have a story. We can look back on our story, or we can be so comfortable in our own skin, because we know we're going to be okay, yeah, what we go through, we're going to be okay. And when you know that, if some client doesn't want to work with you, it doesn't put you under that bridge. Mary is talking about, all right, they don't work with you. Okay? I probably would not have done well with them anyway, if that's if that's what the situation is, and you don't want that client that you think, how many more months do I have with him? You know, those are exhausting. And no matter what the price, you didn't make enough. All right, you want the clients that call you to keep growing, to be excited, to to go and just be alive. And you realize not only you're comfortable in your loving life, hugely different experience. So why don't go there?

Suzanne Taylor-King  39:45  
Well, I love the commonality of reinvention here, and, you know, I love to challenge the audience. We're going to take some questions and stuff in a second. I'm. Um, the idea of reinvention. When I think about both of you, you're both masterful at be still being the same person, but reinventing, not only what you do for a living, but what you're doing in the world, how you're operating in the world. And Dorothy, one of the things you made me see about myself is that I had already reinvented myself three or four times before I became a coach. So the I the idea of helping other people do that, oh, I'm experienced, but that I've actually done it myself so many times, and that's one of the things that both of you bring to the table as well, is this idea of being okay with things, changing, things, growing, things, expanding, things being different. How has that affected what you're able to charge and and also how it's affected what you charge as how is it positioned you in the marketplace? As far as being a coach, a consultant, an advisor,

Mary Shakun  41:22  
it's so much easier to get a client to pay you a million dollars than it is to give for somebody to give you 10,000

Suzanne Taylor-King  41:31  
repeat that again for the people in the back hang out.

Mary Shakun  41:34  
It is. It is so much easier to find a client and have him pay you 1 million or 3 million, then it is to find a client to give you 10,000 or less. It's really difficult, you know, I'm, how should I say my fees depends on who I'm talking to, if I'm interviewing somebody and a consultation, and I feel that, you know, they're strapped for cash, and that they're really telling the truth. I might give it to them for free, but I'm not going to execute it. I know. I I've given my million dollar boardroom away for $4,000 to people who want to learn, who have also charged 40,000 depending on the needs of the of the person I'm speaking to, so I don't have a set fee. But for me is I'm very compassionate, and it's not all about the money. Money is no good. My husband died from leukemia. He had nothing filed for 14 months before, he had in excess of $100 million and a thriving company. My youngest daughter was schizophrenic. She jumped out the window. She an artist, pianist, you name it. You know, beautiful. She had a beautiful life going for herself, and she's gone. You know, life is so fragile, and if you can't do something with the money you have, what's the point in hoarding millions of dollars in the bank? I have a friend who inherited $1 billion and she wouldn't even pay a cup or a cup of coffee from me. What's the point? Yeah, yes, I find that the more I gave, which I gave, most of it, 90% of it, more than 90% of it away to orphans or children or water one thing or another. The more I give, the more I get. I guarantee you one day I gave $5 million away and I got 10 million in. Wow. You know, it's

Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD  43:29  
that comfort again, and you're all scanned by the comfort with life and and I hadn't thought of it in the context you put it in, that the the adaptability, yes, but continuously reinventing ourselves.

Mary Shakun  43:41  
It's about believing you're authentic. Yeah? Authentic and believing, believing that you're okay, believing that what you have to offer is fine. Yeah, I love it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  43:56  
Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of unlock your way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co create a road map for your success, and whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started, I'm here to support you every step of the way to schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at unlock your way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and. End on YouTube. Plus you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the IDEA Lab Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together until next time I'm SDK, keep dreaming big. Stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it.

AI VO  45:26  
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