I Paid Thousands for Mentoring and It Pushed Premium Clients Away. So I Chose to Do This Instead

You've tightened your client standards. You've added screening questions. You've made your business boundaries clearer than ever. And somehow the wrong premium clients are still not showing up.

If you're a woman running an online business and wondering why your clients aren't matching the level you know you can deliver at, this is going to resonate. Because the problem isn't what most people in this industry are telling you it is.

I know because I lived it. In 2025 I was investing thousands of pounds to be in multiple high ticket mentoring spaces. I was surrounded by successful women. I should have felt inspired and supported. Instead I felt paralysed. Every mentor had a different rule about how I should be showing up as a leader.

Don't message clients on weekends.
Don't be too available.
Hold your business boundaries or nobody will take you seriously.

So I followed the rules. All of them. And the more I followed, the more disconnected I became from how I naturally work. My content felt flat. My pricing felt shaky. The clients coming through didn't feel aligned. Something was deeply off and it had nothing to do with my standards not being tight enough.

What I eventually realised changed everything about how I run my business, who I work with and how I show up. And it started with one question I'd never thought to ask myself.
 

When Business Boundaries Become the Problem Instead of the Solution

Let me paint you a picture. I'm sitting in a mentoring space. Someone asks a question about how to handle a client who messages on a Sunday. And the answer from the mentor is swift. "You need to hold your boundaries. If you reply, you're telling them your time isn't valuable."

And everyone in the room nodded.

But here's what was going on in my head. I'm the kind of person who would see a client post a win on their stories on a Saturday morning and send them a voice note celebrating with them. Not because I have no business boundaries. Because that's genuinely who I am. I care deeply about the people I work with. I get excited when they get results. And my best ideas don't always arrive between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday.

So when I was told that responding outside "business hours" made me look less premium, I didn't just disagree quietly. I started shrinking. I stopped doing the things that made me brilliant at what I do. I stopped sending those voice notes. I stopped being spontaneous with my clients. I put myself inside a box that someone else had built and called it professionalism.

And the worst part? It didn't work. My clients didn't suddenly become more aligned. My positioning didn't feel more premium. If anything, the whole experience of running my business started to feel hollow.

What I've come to understand is that the online business space has created this culture where business boundaries are treated like the answer to everything. Struggling with client quality? Tighten your boundaries. Feeling overwhelmed? You need firmer boundaries. Someone asks you a question at 7pm? Boundary violation.

But nobody is asking the more important question. What if the boundaries you're holding aren't even yours? What if you adopted them from a mentor, a course or a podcast and they don't actually reflect how you work best?

That's exactly what happened to me. And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
 

What Is the Standards Action Gap? And Why It Repels Premium Clients

There's something I've started calling the standards action gap. And once you understand it, you'll see it everywhere.

The standards action gap is the distance between what you say your standards are and how you're actually operating day to day. It's the disconnect between the positioning you're putting out into the world and the experience people get when they come closer.

Why does it matter? Because premium clients can feel it. They might not be able to name it but they sense when something is off. When your content says one thing but your energy says another. When you talk about excellence but your delivery tells a different story. When you position yourself as high end but negotiate on price the moment someone pushes back.

That gap is doing more damage than you realise. It's not loud. It's not obvious. But it's quietly repelling the exact people you want to attract and welcoming in the ones who will drain you.

I see it constantly with the women I work with. They're making good money. They're booked. From the outside everything looks successful. But privately they'll tell me their clients exhaust them. They feel resentful. They're questioning whether they even enjoy what they do anymore. And when we dig into it, the issue is almost always the same. There's a gap between who they are and how they're showing up
 

How Does the Standards Action Gap Show Up in Your Business

Let me give you some real examples so this doesn't stay theoretical.

You say you only work with committed clients. But you've got someone on your roster who hasn't done the work in weeks and you haven't addressed it because you don't want the confrontation.

You talk about premium positioning on your social media. But when someone gets on a call and says your price is too high, you offer a payment plan you never intended to offer or worse, you drop the price entirely.

You post content about how you value quality over quantity. But behind the scenes you're taking on more clients than you can genuinely serve because you're scared of a quiet month.

You've told yourself you have high standards. And maybe you do on paper. But the way you're operating tells a completely different story. And the people watching you, the premium clients who would be a dream to work with, they're reading that story whether you realise it or not.

The gap isn't always about doing something wrong. Sometimes it's about tolerating something you know isn't right. Sometimes it's about avoiding a conversation. Sometimes it's about saying yes when everything in you is screaming no.

And every time you let that gap widen, you're sending a signal. Not through your words. Through your actions. And premium clients pay attention to actions.
 

What Anna Wintour and Vogue Taught Me About Leading From Your Business Core Values

I want to take you somewhere completely different for a moment. I want to talk about Anna Wintour.

Whether you love her or not, there is something undeniable about how that woman operates. Anna Wintour doesn't walk into a room and announce her boundaries. She doesn't post on LinkedIn about what she will and won't tolerate. She doesn't need to. Because everything about how she shows up communicates her standards without her ever having to say a word.

The way she runs Vogue. The people she surrounds herself with. The decisions she makes about what gets published and what doesn't. None of that comes from a list of rules stuck to a wall. It comes from her business core values being so deeply embedded in who she is that they show up in everything she does.

And that's the difference I want you to sit with. Because in the online business world we've been taught that the way to be taken seriously is to announce our standards loudly. Put them on your website. Say them in your content. Make sure everyone knows what you will and won't accept.

But the women and brands I admire most don't operate that way. Their standards are obvious not because they talk about them constantly but because you can feel them. In the quality of their work. In how they communicate. In the details most people would overlook.

Your business core values aren't a marketing strategy. They're not something you list in a highlight on Instagram and then forget about on a Tuesday afternoon when things get stressful. They're the foundation that every single decision in your business should be built on.

When your values are genuinely embedded, you don't need to announce your boundaries. Your positioning does it for you. The way you show up does it for you. The experience you create for people does it for you.

I spent so long trying to borrow other people's values and call them my own. Other people's rules about what premium looks like. Other people's definitions of leadership. And it wasn't until I stripped all of that back and got honest about what actually matters to me that things started to shift.

Not just in who was enquiring. In how I felt about my business again.

 

How to Close the Gap and Attract Premium Clients Who Match Your Standards

So how do you actually fix this? How do you close that standards action gap and start attracting the premium clients you know you're meant to be working with?

It starts with honesty. Radical, uncomfortable honesty about where the gap exists in your business right now.

Where are you saying one thing but doing another? Where are you tolerating behaviour from clients that doesn't match what you say your standards are? Where are you showing up in a way that contradicts the premium positioning you've built?

Most people skip this step. They'd rather add another filter to their application form or raise their prices and hope that solves the problem. But premium clients aren't filtered in through a better questionnaire. They're drawn in by the energy, the consistency and the alignment of the person leading.

One of the most powerful things I did was get clear on my business core values. Not the ones that sounded good. Not the ones I'd borrowed from mentors. The ones that were genuinely mine. The ones I'd follow even if nobody was watching. Even if it meant losing money in the short term.

And then I audited everything against those values. My content. My client experience. My pricing. How I communicate. What I tolerate. What I celebrate. All of it.

The things that didn't align? I changed them. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But consistently. And the shift was remarkable.

I stopped attracting people who wanted to negotiate. I stopped working with people who drained me. The women who started coming into my world were different. Not because I'd built a higher wall around my business. But because I'd become so clear on who I am that the right people could finally recognise themselves in what I was putting out.

If you want to attract clients who match your standards, the answer isn't to make your standards louder. It's to make your values deeper. It's to close the gap between what you're saying and what you're doing. It's to stop performing premium positioning and start embodying it.

That's the shift. And it changes everything.

I go much deeper into this in the episode, including the exact moment everything shifted for me and the framework I now use with every woman I work with. If anything in this post made you pause, the episode will take it further.

 

Key Takeaways

  • Your business boundaries might be borrowed from someone else's framework and that disconnect is visible to premium clients even if you can't see it yourself.

     

  • The standards action gap, the distance between what you say your standards are and how you actually operate, is quietly repelling the people you most want to work with.

     

  • Premium positioning isn't built through rigid rules or announcements. It's built through business core values that are so deeply embedded they show up in every interaction.

     

  • To attract clients who genuinely match your level, stop making your standards louder and start making your values deeper.

 

FAQ

What are business boundaries?

Business boundaries are the guidelines and limits you establish around how your business operates. They can include things like working hours, response times, client communication preferences, payment policies and scope of work. In the online business space, boundaries are often taught as essential to premium positioning, but they work best when they come from your own values rather than borrowed rules. Boundaries that feel forced or performative can actually push away the right people. The most effective business boundaries are ones that naturally reflect how you work best and what you genuinely need to deliver excellent results.

 

What is the difference between business boundaries and standards?

Business boundaries are the rules you set around how you work, such as communication hours, payment terms or availability. Standards are the overall level of quality, integrity and experience you hold yourself and your clients to. The key difference is that boundaries are external rules you enforce while standards are internal benchmarks you embody. Many business owners focus heavily on setting firmer boundaries when the real issue is that their standards aren't being reflected in their actions. When your standards and your behaviour are aligned, boundaries become less about rigid rules and more about natural self selection.

 

What are business core values and why do they matter for attracting premium clients?

Your business core values are the non negotiable principles that guide every decision you make in your business. They go beyond surface level statements like "I value quality" and into how you actually behave when no one is watching. When your values are genuinely embedded, they shape your content, your client experience, your pricing and your communication. Premium clients are drawn to consistency and alignment. When what you say matches what you do, the right people feel it and trust it. Values driven businesses don't need to announce their standards because everything about how they operate communicates them naturally.

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] And that's my challenge with what I'm seeing in content marketing in the online space around holding standards. This "I'm a boundaried queen" type energy. Why do we need to keep on reinforcing this? What's missing in the step before? When you join my spaces, when you come into work with me, I have clear guidelines about when I'm available and when I'm not.

[00:00:22] But I set it once. And I sometimes break those rules.

[00:00:22] Welcome to Rich Work, the podcast for established female entrepreneurs ready to turn their expertise into premium clients and consistent high ticket revenue. I'm Rachel Pearson, global brand and business strategist, skincare obsessed and always distracted by booking the next mini break.

[00:00:43] Here you'll learn how to position like a luxury brand, attract clients who love to invest and build something that lasts. So you can create the business and life you want, not someone else's version of success. This is where premium positioning and building wealth meet for women who are rewriting the rules.

[00:01:02] Let's get into it. 2025 was a big shift in my business and it wasn't a huge pivot. It wasn't that I started to do a lot of new things. I did a lot less last year than I had done the year before. And it became a pivotal year because I realised there was a huge part of me that I had lost.

[00:01:31] I was in different mentoring spaces. I was working with different coaches, and that's something that for some people works, for other people it doesn't. For me, I've always liked to be in different things where I have different perspectives, but last year it really started to go against me. There was a lot of noise. There was a lot of opinion and input, and it all came from a genuine good place, but a lot of it was around business boundaries.

[00:02:01] And I was in spaces that were premium spaces, places that I was spending thousands of pounds to be in. And great mentors, great coaches.

[00:02:13] There was a lot of focus on what to do and what not to do when you are working at a higher level. When you are working with clients who are looking to build and grow and scale their business. When they want to make more money. When they want to lead in a different way. When they are really elevating their leadership and how they show up for their business.

[00:02:39] I was in those kinds of spaces. I realised that I just felt really disconnected from a lot of what was being said to the point where I wasn't really going into them with the questions around strategy and I wasn't really bringing what I could and should have been to those spaces to be able to get support.

[00:03:00] And I was like, what is going on here? Because I've paid a lot of money for spaces I know should be where my business grows. And I sat with it and I thought, what is this? What is holding me back? Because I don't think right now this is me not being able to know what to ask.

[00:03:24] And it hit me. I felt like I couldn't do anything right. I'd go into a space and one mentor was saying make sure you have really tight boundaries. This is around leadership. Don't message your clients on a weekend. Don't be too responsive. Hold your business boundaries or you won't be seen as a leader.

[00:03:45] And I found myself really paralysed because my values, the natural way that I show up, didn't match what I was being told I "should" be doing.

[00:03:45] I'm somebody who works really hard. I have done this throughout my career, before I moved into the online space. I really love working. I love it, and I'll work on the weekends if I want to.

[00:04:12] I will message a client if I see on their stories that they're celebrating something and it's a weekend. I will message them to celebrate them. If I see something that they're advertising and selling and I think of a really great angle, which my mind is constantly doing so it usually comes up, I will message them and tell them. Is it a hundred percent of the time? No.

[00:04:33] But I realised that I was feeling so judged for that, and this is on me that I was feeling that. But it really brought up, when we talk about standards, when we talk about these quite high level clients, what does that mean?

[00:05:00] Because to me, it's not about following the rules, and it's not about constantly telling people when you're available, when you're not available. Your standards are not about putting in these hard and fast boundaries that if God forbid you break any of them, then you are not any kind of leader. It's about being in alignment with your values.

[00:05:00] This is what I'm going to be talking about today. Premium client standards. Why I feel like the online space has started to get this backwards and what my viewpoint is that hopefully helps to open this discussion for you. If you are sitting there thinking, I just feel really disconnected. I know that I work at this level. I know the clients that I serve. I know that my mission in this business is really big. I want to help. I want to serve, but I'm feeling really disconnected because I'm in a box. Then this is for you.

Why Constantly Announcing Your Standards Is a Positioning Problem

[00:05:58] That is a huge conversation right now in the online space, and I think particularly in coaching, in the world that I'm in, about standards and business boundaries.

[00:06:00] And it's not a surprise because particularly for women, saying no is huge, right? We are naturally nurturers, givers. We want to bring communities together. That is inherent. It's not necessarily about being a people pleaser or not. It's about who you are as a woman. And so to say no, to exclude somebody, to feel like you are letting somebody down, those are all the associations that come with saying no. So to have those guidelines in place, to be able to say this is not for me, is a huge step for a lot of women.

[00:06:27] But I feel like a lot of the way that standards are talked about in business and in the online space is performance. And is so rigid.

[00:06:49] And I can see it when somebody has a shift in their business. They've started to make more money or they want to work with a different level of client. I can see that sometimes they become this rigid being online. And I'm like, what happened to your personal brand? What happened to you? What happened to the human that's behind it?

[00:07:08] And we announce these standards, we enforce them, we talk about them constantly. In guidelines when you join a programme. In putting into the space that you are in when you are available, when you're not available. I only work nine to five. I don't respond on Slack on the weekends. I have a 48 hour turnaround time.

[00:07:25] And it's important to have those in place. My belief is we do need those guidelines because it sets the expectation of how you work and for your clients as well. However, I feel like those standards should be set way before somebody puts their money down with you.

[00:07:53] And that's my challenge with what I'm seeing in content marketing in the online space around holding standards. This "I'm a boundaried queen" type energy. Why do we need to keep on reinforcing this? What's missing in the step before?

[00:07:53] When you join my spaces, when you come into work with me, I have clear guidelines about when I'm available and when I'm not. But I set it once and I sometimes break those rules.

[00:08:12] I said I will contact a client if I'm just really excited for them. That's the way I work. I have that kind of relationship. I don't have a problem with hundreds of clients messaging me all weekend. I don't have an issue with clients that consistently come in and expect to work one to one with me when they're in a group programme.

[00:08:32] In fact, I don't have any of those issues that I can think about. But I'm not constantly telling people what my standards are, what my boundaries are. And that's because I think the problem is that when your standards are rules that you have to keep on announcing, that's a positioning problem. That's not about boundaries or you needing to tighten them or needing to have more process. That stems from your premium positioning.

[00:08:57] And this is where I feel like I want to open the conversation out about what premium client standards mean.

The Anna Wintour Moment That Changed How I Think About Business Core Values

[00:09:00] I'm going to give you an example from outside of the online space that really stuck with me and was almost like a breath of relief when I heard it. I was like, okay, what I believe, what I stand for, is right.

[00:09:00] I went to an event last November, so November 2025, towards the end of the year. And in all honesty, 2025 was such a tough year for me. It was really high growth for the business, but a lot of the time I was like, what is going on here? This is not the business that I really want to create. And that was when I realised that I really needed to start listening to myself more.

[00:09:33] I went to this conference in Dubai, and one of the keynote speakers there was Anna Wintour, who is everywhere right now. If you're listening at the current time of recording, Devil Wears Prada two is out. But even if you don't see that film, you know who Anna Wintour is. Huge figure in terms of Vogue, Condé Nast, media publishing. Very distinctive. You know, with the bob that always makes me think of Edna from The Incredibles. If you've got kids, you'll totally know what I'm saying.

[00:09:53] But she was asked the question, what does leadership look like? And her answer was something I was really not expecting. I thought she would talk about leadership being about having a clear vision, being fully convicted in who you're for and what you do.

[00:10:12] And she did speak about that throughout her talk. But she was really emotional during this question, and obviously still had her big sunglasses on, but you could hear it in her voice.

[00:10:30] She spoke about how when 9/11 happened, obviously a terrible time for New York, for the world. I remember seeing that happen. Getting back from college, switching on the news. It was just horrific.

[00:10:53] And what I didn't realise until I heard her talk was that when 9/11 happened, it was the first week of New York Fashion Week, and a lot of upcoming fashion designers had put everything into that week. It was their week to break through.

[00:11:14] And so when 9/11 happened, the ripple impact of that was that the city stopped moving. Everything was cancelled. Events, you didn't know when they were going to happen. And so these fashion designers were facing bankruptcy. It wasn't just about Fashion Week not happening. It was, I don't have anything. I've put everything into this week and I'm facing having nothing left.

[00:11:43] And what Anna Wintour and the team at Vogue did was they got together and they said, what do we want to do? What are we doing at this moment? What does Vogue represent at this moment?

[00:11:43] And they chose to go with their values. Vogue has always been a publication that is very focused on community building, building a community around fashion.

[00:12:00] It's not just about looking at beautiful clothes. It's about the stories of designers. It's the world of fashion and celebrating that. So they created a funding initiative to support fashion designers, fashion founders that could access grants immediately during that week in the aftermath of 9/11. And it saved those fashion designers from going out of business.

[00:12:31] And since then, that programme that started during that time has become the grant that has enabled fashion designers that you will know the names of now. Several of them have come through that programme.

[00:12:31] It really stuck with me because she was talking about business core values. Yes, it was about leadership. But Vogue didn't need to go out and tell everybody, look at what we're doing. We're so great. We're supporting these designers. This is what we're doing. They didn't know what this was going to turn into. They didn't know that what started at that time was going to last 20 plus years. They just acted based on what the values of the brand represented at that time.

[00:12:55] And it really stuck with me because it is about the standards of that brand, Vogue.

[00:13:18] Now, when you are looking at it being not just a magazine but a media brand, it's got to go across multiple different platforms now. But when you look at Vogue, you have a choice whether you engage with their content or not. Especially now we have so much other content out there. But you'll go to Vogue because it has that standard of community, the world of fashion, supporting up and coming designers, giving you access and insight into people that you don't know yet that they know are going to be huge. That's why you go to Vogue.

[00:13:35] So that's a standard that they hold of why you will go to consume that publication. But that standard is not something that they constantly talk about. They're not saying we are the leading publication, we are the leading media outlet for innovation and fashion. You just know that. You know that from what Vogue does, because of who is behind the brand, because of how it leads with its values.

[00:13:59] And this is where, yes, this is an outside perspective of how a brand like Vogue has done it, but this is what I really relate into the business space, into the online world, into how you are expressing to your clients, your customers, about what your standards are.

[00:14:24] It comes from who you are. It comes from who you work with. It comes from those values being so clear, embodied in decisions you make, expressed through the content that you create.

[00:14:53] Shown through and felt through the decisions that you choose not to take forward or people you choose not to collaborate with. But you don't have to keep on reinforcing it all the time. It's about people seeing that from you. You show it without needing to constantly tell them. Or putting these rigid rules in place that mean people feel like they can't be in your world, they can't be in your space unless they follow this particular way.

Why Your Premium Clients Should Already Know Your Values Before They Invest

[00:15:00] In my view, the ideal premium clients for your work are the ones that deeply share your values. It doesn't mean you have to be exactly the same person or that you are inviting in these mini me clones that come through. But at a core level, do you share business core values? A shared understanding of what you're trying to create here?

[00:15:22] And I don't think that should be a surprise. When somebody comes, invests with you and they get a set of guidelines in a welcome email and they're like, oh, I didn't think it was going to be like this. You don't want any surprises at that point.

[00:15:43] This is way before. This is in your marketing. This is in your content. This is how people see you show up. When you talk to people in person, they're able to get that sense of your values, of your standards there.

[00:16:00] So if you are thinking right now, I feel like I'm not working with the type of people that I want to work with, or I have clients in my space that aren't matching how I know that I want to work with them. I'm not able to bring the depth of my work, or we're having the same conversations over and over again.

[00:16:23] Then this is an invitation to you. Where are you shrinking yourself down? Not coming forward with your values? And relying on, well, I've set these guidelines up, they should be able to follow them.

[00:16:45] It has to be compatible. Who you are looking to call into your spaces, who you want to work with, is compatible with how you hold yourself, how you lead yourself based on your values.

[00:16:45] So if, for example, your value is reciprocal respect. Very obvious one to have. You naturally will attract clients who share with maturity, who have intention. And it's not because you had to screen them through three complicated forms or an application process.

[00:17:14] It's because that's the energy that you're moving from. I do have application forms for my spaces, but it's one. And right now, I haven't had to turn anybody away. And it's not because I'm letting anybody in to work with me, but it's because I read the form, and that's just a sense check. It's not a screening process.

[00:17:32] It's a sense check of, yeah, my client is resonating with my content. They see how I move. They get my values. There's a shared understanding here. And then the application is just a sense check for me and them. And I don't do sales calls. I hardly ever do sales calls. This is an efficiency thing for me. But it's not a, "oh, how did this happen? How did this person think that this was the right space for them?"

How to Spot the Standards Action Gap in Your Own Business

[00:17:54] So a question for you is, when you look at the clients that you have that you feel aren't the right fit, or you see enquiries come in and they're not the right stage, right level, right type of business for the services or the offers that you have.

[00:18:00] Where are you tolerating that right now? And that can even be in how you are allowing those clients to even move through to an application process. Are you tolerating that because you are really not showing the depth of your values in your content? Are you tolerating it because you are holding back on speaking opinions that you really care about and share with your clients?

[00:18:40] Maybe you believe holding standards means not telling people how much you work because maybe they'll feel like you work too hard, considering that you talk about leading a business and having flexibility. But you really want to work hard and you get to lead a life with flexibility, but it's because you work really bloody hard.

[00:18:46] Then tell people that. There are so many clients that I'm working with now, and I saw this come through in 2025 as well, who are successful in their business. They are making good money. They have a team. They know what they want. But they are like rabbits in headlights around making a wrong move.

[00:19:08] Speaking too much about something because somebody else over there said that speaking about that is going to put off high level clients. That may be what works for them. It may be how they attract clients into their world. But for you as somebody who leads, as somebody who has a dynamic way of leading, you are diluting the very reason why somebody is going to be magnetised to you.

[00:19:30] And then relying on "standards" as in application forms, complex screening processes, holding business boundaries when people get into spaces. You are relying on that to do the work.

[00:19:54] If you're listening to this and you feel that gap between the clients that you have and the clients that you know you're really here to serve. Between what you truly value and how you are operating, showing up, what you are letting show in your business right now. If that is the gap, that is what we do inside Calibration.

[00:20:31] My mastermind. It's a six month space for women who know they're operating at a high level, but your positioning, your leadership, your pricing, your business model hasn't caught up yet. So if you have been feeling this pull, resonating with what I'm saying, there's a link in the show notes to apply to Calibration and to find out more about the space.

What Is the Standards Action Gap? And Why It Repels Premium Clients

[00:20:56] What I'm describing is what I call the standards action gap.

[00:21:00] So if you say that your standard is working with conscious, mission driven women who are ready to invest in themselves, but then you are negotiating on price, or you are doubting that if you hold the price then a client might not come and work with you. That is where there is incompatibility.

[00:21:14] Or if your standard is working with women at a level in business where they have to already be making six figures, or they have to have a team in place, or they have to have consistent client enquiries, but then you are overdelivering, overexplaining, trying to prove your value because you don't quite believe in the value yet yourself. That is where there's incompatibility.

[00:21:40] And none of these are about the clients that you have being bad clients, or you needing to fix something in yourself, or needing to fundamentally change the way that you work. And none of these are that your current clients are bad clients or that the people you've worked with before who haven't been the right fit are bad people.

[00:22:04] It's not that. This is about values and action misalignment. And every single time that you are allowing that gap to exist, that is what means you then feel the need to tighten up your standards by telling somebody about them.

[00:22:24] They'll come to me and say, "I think I need to review my onboarding process" or "I need to really look at the way the standards are being held within this space, this offer." And I'm like, mm hmm. Tell me about the client that you really want in this space. Let's start there first. Now let's look at why you're not speaking to that client in your content.

[00:22:41] Yes, we can continue to do things to refine the process, to make sure that the way a space works, the way an offer works is really efficient. But relying on that because you don't see that the clients you're working with are the right fit? That's not the problem.

[00:23:02] It's because you are not operating from your business core values, and that is impacting your standards. It is putting pressure on the operational part of your business to reinforce them, when what we really need to look at first is your premium positioning, your business model, why you're not holding your pricing.

[00:23:02] That is what premium client standards are.

How to Close the Gap and Attract Premium Clients Who Match Your Standards

[00:23:47] I was speaking to somebody who has just come into a support role in my team. And I was saying to her that one area, one aspect of my content that I want to bring out more in my values is that I am relentless. And that is a word that creates tension.

[00:24:00] Being relentless as a woman is not understood. I am relentless. I always get what I want because I always make it happen. Sometimes that can take me 10 years. I will not give up.

[00:24:20] And I said it really openly to her because I realised that in the way that I've been showing up, I have not been communicating that. And in order for clients to get the most from my work, they have to match me on that. Not needing to work 24/7, but a hunger to go for what they want and a hunger to stay true to that when it's not going to plan.

[00:24:44] So when you look at your values, I mean, I'm not going to go out and talk about this all over my Instagram. I'm not going to say I only work with you if you are relentless. But I am going to be bringing it through in how I show up, how I share my story, and how I talk about my client results.

[00:25:10] What are your values that are true to you today and for the business that you're building?

[00:25:37] That's the standards action gap. And that gap is what attracts the misaligned clients in and repels the right ones. Because they see you acting in that gap and the person who sees you in that gap resonates with it, rather than the person that you know you can lead resonating with the way that you show up in your full leadership.

[00:26:01] And then thirdly, make one change from listening to this. Make one change. I do not want you to go away and create 10 new rules. Go and rewrite your Telegram onboarding guide or your welcome sequence. That is not what this is about. Start living your values more clearly. That is what is going to magnetise the right people to you.

[00:26:26] So it might be, I'm not explaining my pricing. I'm going to state it and that's it. Or, I am going to stop taking on clients that I am not excited about. Because your value behind it is you're building a business that is driven by a bigger mission than one client. That's why your values start to really come into your standards.

[00:26:55] Or it might be, I'm going to share how I fully work, including the fact that I sometimes message clients on weekends because I'm thinking about their growth.

[00:27:00] I said to one of my one to one clients the other day, I've been thinking about your Instagram bio because I'm a bit weird like that. She said, I love it. That's what I do for my clients as well.

[00:27:14] But right now, we are relying too much on upholding standards rather than looking at why those clients that first come in aren't matching the standards in the first place.

[00:27:37] When your standards are rooted in your values, you will show up differently for what you charge. If you have clients that you are tolerating, who are capping your ability to charge at the level that you know you should really be charging at, you don't quite believe that you deserve it, or you think that they're going to push back, that's on you to change.

[00:27:59] You have to recalibrate your standards, your values first, because pricing will then become an obvious change and obvious next step. The pricing will then align with everything that you're bringing.

[00:28:18] The clients that you feel are not a great fit in your space, or the inquiries that you see coming in right now that you feel are not aligned to what you do and who you are, that's not a people problem or a boundaries problem. It's a values and actions problem. It is a premium positioning problem.

[00:28:46] If you want to think about the level of client that you're truly here to serve, then go into episode six around your catalyst client, which will be a really good reintroduction into thinking about the client you truly want in your world.

[00:29:11] Next week I'm going into something that I think might be even more uncomfortable than what we've talked about today, which is what happens when your results have outgrown your positioning. So when you are delivering at a level but you are not being seen for it yet. That's going to be next week's episode and I will see you there.

[00:29:32] Thanks for tuning in to Rich Work. I'd love it if you left a review. It helps other women to find us. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram @rachelpearson.co for a different take on premium positioning, one that's not about fitting a box. See you next week.