Feedback Really Matters

I have this persistent theme in my business journey that I think might pertain to so many of you. You’ve probably noticed in the UpLevel Lounge Facebook group, I tend to ask for help with homework and feedback from time to time. At the moment, this homework is for my mindset coaching certification program.

And as with any type of coaching or personal development, you add something to the mix in terms of your toolbox. You shift some of your focus, digging deep to provide more to your clients. I wanted to talk about this topic because I tend to push my coaching clients to do the same thing; I encourage them to dig deep and focus on mindset. 

So, in the theme of mindset, let’s talk about feedback. So, feedback matters because that’s how we learn, right? That’s how we’re going to get information. It is really, really easy to assume that we know what people want, but it’s really interesting when we start actually asking for that feedback. Our interpretation and the way we see things is not necessarily the way that our clients or customers are going to see things. And I know that sounds basic when I say it like that to you. But, it’s really important to remember as the CEO of your business. As the CEO, it’s important because you want to be constantly growing. You constantly want to be upleveling everything that you do. 

Feedback matters for so many reasons. 

Feedback helps improve our processes that will help attract more of our ideal clients, in that, we can explain the problems that we solve with the solutions we provide. Full disclosure: that’s because we’ve heard the problems when we get that feedback. And so, the clearer we can get, the better off we’re going to be. 

As for getting the feedback that matters? Asking our ideal clients is the very best way to gather info. This is because it’s someone you’ve already worked with, you can comfortably ask them questions that are sometimes very, very uncomfortable. This brings me to my next point: what feedback says about mindset and growth potential. If you’re in my group coaching, you know we cover this early on. 

Feedback is a very important piece of having an abundance mindset. We want feedback when we have an abundance mindset, because that’s going to help us improve or do something better. Instead of feeling fearful of what people are going to say. That’s a scarcity mindset flaring up. 

We want to be in the camp of the abundance mindset; we want to have that mindset that’s going to be growth-focused. That helps us all learn how to show up better for our audience. It allows us to improve our processes and reach more people. We may think we have everything articulated because we’ve done our own homework, but we’re probably putting messages out there that we ourselves want to hear. And that’s not always the same as what our ideal clients want to hear or it’s not the same experience they want. 

So, right now, I’m focused on getting feedback in terms of my messaging. So I can understand what I’m doing to cause transformation. I know in my head and my heart what I do, but how do I translate that to my ideal client?

Be comfortable asking for feedback. Ask for feedback as a part of your workflows when off-boarding clients. Ask for feedback before you launch something; you have to make yourself vulnerable in order to really flourish and really grow. If we ask for feedback, then we’re willing to really step into that CEO space and say, I just want to learn from my people so I can serve them in the best way possible while continuing to uplevel my services. 

When to Ask for Feedback 

Now that I’ve made a case for asking for feedback…when should you ask for it? And I know I’ve touched on it a few times earlier, but to be clear: ask for it after we’ve had a relationship with someone (in terms of an engagement or a project). When we’re off-boarding them, it’s the ideal time to ask, how do you think that went? What feedback do you have for me?

When something is in the ideation phase, it is really important that we ask for feedback. We can ask, does this resonate with you? If offered this service, would it be something you would pay for? It’s legitimately really easy to get an idea and just want to create it/put it out there. But that’s not always the smartest approach (we wouldn’t tell our clients to do that).  

We’d tell our clients, wait a second. Let’s validate the idea first. In my other blog post ‘How to Focus Your Attention,’, I break down how to go about validating them. Because if you have an idea, you need to ensure – via feedback – that it’s worth putting in the effort. 

Feedback is Fuel

Feedback itself – let me point out – can come from two places/purposes:  Feedback can be used for a reactive purpose. As in, you can adjust your process after receiving feedback. Or, feedback can be proactive. You can get messaging and thoughts before you launch a product. Before I get too far from mindset, that plays a role here too. If we’re asking for it, expecting negativity about our client’s experience with us, that can be incredibly uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as to ask for compliments. (That’s why, having a growth mindset will prep you for whatever feedback you get, knowing you’re going to grow from it.) 

Funny enough, positive feedback can be very hard to hear! I recently had to ask five people I’m close with to tell me five things that I’m very good at as part of my mindset coaching homework. 

I asked for that in group coaching a few days ago, and one of my coaching students said (in a very loving way), I can feel you crawling in your skin when people give you compliments. You need to be better at receiving compliments. Admittedly, that’s a downfall of mine. Even positive feedback can be uncomfortable. That needs to be a part of my – and your – growth mindset work. I need to get more comfortable with hearing the good, knowing that I am doing some things right instead of always seeking to improve. 

As a mother to a strong and smart daughter, I want her to be able to receive compliments and just say thank you. She can feel good about what others are telling her. Even though she’s a kiddo now, I want her – and my coaching clients – to focus on the mindset piece.

Wisdom From Feedback 

I want to really make sure that what I’m doing is smart in terms of my business goals, but it’s also getting the right communication out there to my ideal clients. That’s because when I’m visible, I want to be visible in the right way. So hopefully, that’s making sense to you! 

I study the words my clients use; I need to understand what interacting with me feels like to you in a verbalized way so I can tell other people. As I grow and scale my business, I’m not going to be able to work one-on-one with every person, telling them about my services, right? They’re going to have to read about it. And I want to make sure that when they read it, they have some type of transformation and they feel it. 

Now, if you’re not sure where to get feedback, you can totally use your communities. The UpLevel Lounge FB group is full of wise entreps who will tell it like it is. Let’s say, you’re working on a specific project, you can narrow it down to specific messaging based on feedback you get from peers. 

That’s the feedback you want because you don’t want to just throw spaghetti at the wall. You don’t want to take a stab in the dark and hope you get it right. Utilize your network, your audience, and your ideal clients. Find out, does this offering resonate? Does it make sense? As an example, I use the term CEO mindset a lot. And I just assumed that people know what I’m trying to convey there. But, I found that I needed to break that down even further. I reprogrammed myself to realize that those words are so powerful, so they must be articulated in the right way. (Words of affirmation is my love language, if you couldn’t tell). 

Feedback Comes in Many Forms

I bring up the idea of love languages because that is also a key part of this discussion. How we receive information is not always the same way that our audience is going to receive information. What we want to get from something or a given program/product is not necessarily the same experience that our clients want to get. So, that’s why we have to ask, and we have to get that feedback. 

When you have a growth mindset, when you’re vulnerable asking for feedback, you can soon show up better, show up stronger, be a better leader, and be a better service provider to your ideal client. As an example of this, CEOs of million-dollar businesses had to get feedback and learn how to apply it at different stages of their growth in order to get there. If you want to be in that space, you’ll do the same: ask for feedback, ask for it proactively, and ask for it while launching something. 

This is all a part of the growth process; you don’t just ask for it once. Sometimes, that allows us to even pivot to further resonate with our audience. We can even adjust our avatar.  This all to say, no matter what service you provide, you want to look for ways to improve what you offer so you can get better and better results and attract those people that really gravitate towards what you have to offer. Because we all want dream clients. We want to work with more people who are willing to pay a premium price for a premium service, but we don’t want to work harder. We want to use the knowledge of our experience to enhance what we have already done and put out there, in order to tweak our processes and offerings. 

It can be so easy for me – and lots of my coaching clients – to go back to the scarcity mindset. Thankfully, I stumbled on the knowledge of the difference between this and an abundance mindset. And you know, I’m still in the infancy stages of growth. I don’t think it’s something you can ever master. It’s something to continually practice. I know for myself, I’ve gotten better at it in the past three years since I really identified it. 

In the past year alone, I identified that I was going to step into the CEO role of my business and have that abundance mindset. I was going to put myself and my business first, and in order to do that, I needed to get feedback so I can show up even better.