Sharing quick wins without context is standard practice for online business.
But is it the best way to celebrate your clients, share your successes, and make more money when you’re in a service-based business? Sure, it attracts in new clients – who doesn’t want the massive result one of your clients has created? But If you’re working in the deep, in the dark with people, it’s likely how you’re sharing testimonials is costing you and your clients results, and that also costs you repeat custom, referrals, and other opportunities too.
At a fundamental level, our deepest needs are safety, belonging and significance. Research repeatedly shows that we’ll choose those needs over both our basic needs like food and our higher needs, like following our purpose. The brain isn’t great at truly assessing your needs or how they work together, because it sees through the lenses of beliefs. For example, if you believe you won’t belong anymore if you take your business to the next level, you’ll self-sabotage your own efforts to expand. Essentially, you’ll give up the possibility of greater safety, new belonging and higher significance, for the illusion of consistency provided by staying exactly where you are.
In a business where your clients are learning to heal or grow, or where they’re otherwise working to grow with you because they aspire to be like you and create what you’ve created for themselves, hat balance between safety, belonging and significance is under constant tension. It’s constantly kind of like a raw wound that’s only just starting to heal over, because they’re constantly testing it’s limits through their healing or expansion work.
It’s possibly you’ve felt some version of this before too, whether it’s been with someone sharing testimonials, or something similar, like a friend getting better grades in an exam when you feel like you worked just as hard or harder.
Loss of safety
When you suddenly feel like someone else has more than you, it can challenge your idea of safety because you feel like they’ve secured greater access to resources. Research repeatedly shows experiencing disparity has negative consequences to overall wellbeing (for example, this study here). This is also true of the illusion of disparity too.
Loss of Belonging
When you suddenly feel like the person you’re working with is helping someone else more (or better) it can challenge your belonging. Clients bring their attachment styles into the room with them wherever they go (we all do). When they have this moment of seeing what appears to be “more connection” between you and someone else, it’s not uncommon to either
1) Pushing away hard, because your coping mechanism for loss of connection is to cut connection yourself, rather than risk further emotional injury. In this context, you’re likely to push away from the work, and therefore from the results they were moving towards with you. In many cases, you’ll see this in yourself when you’re the client (or in your own clients with you) as disengagement from the process and support and starting to shop around for services that do the exact same thing
2) Experiencing an overwhelming need to reconnect, subconsciously expressed as co-dependent “needs” that require the other person’s attention. In this instance, otherwise very capable individuals can revert to an under-functioner role and genuinely experience themselves as not knowing what to do, and start subconsciously wait to be rescued or even to sabotage things that are working to speed rescue (and reconnection) along.
Whilst neither of these responses is healthy for any party, they’re not uncommon. It takes a very emotionally regulated individual not to respond from their own wounds.
Loss of Significance
When you suddenly feel like others are doing better than you, and consequently getting more attention than you, it can challenge your sense of significance. Significance is built on a foundation of safety and belonging (whether those are from the outside world or created internally). Consequently, loss of significance creates similar feelings and responses to loss of safety and loss of belonging.
Being confronted with the idea that someone else working with me is doing “better” can feel like an abandonment, a shaming, or betrayal because our culture is built on comparison. It doesn’t matter that a moment before they were in love with their results. It doesn’t matter that they know themselves more than ever before, and they feel the depth of my support down to their bones. It can still hurt.
What can also hurt is being the client and having your result misrepresented. For example, you may feel very much like you created a result despite someone, not thanks to them. To seem then taking credit kicks up all kinds of things with significance. Even if you’d generally attribute credit (or more likely partial credit) to them, the feeling when someone just takes it isn’t great.
This might feel like it works both ways – if you’re the service provider and believe you’re owned credit and someone is “withholding it.” However, it’s not the same – at the end of the day, you’ve received money for that service. That’s your payment. And you’ve received experience that you can credit yourself for. But attaching their name to those results, or their story by which they can easily identify themselves… that belongs to them. Spiritually, practically, and legally too. You need their permission to share that.
When you’re the service provider… (for when you’re the buyer, keep reading)
In an environment where you’re serving others, especially in a one-to-many setting, you can find yourself facing situations where you’re seeing results dropping and clients pulling away, and experiencing more and more customer service issues, without knowing why.
Online business gurus are very quick to say that it’s “a not you thing” – that it’s 100% clients’ responsibility to manage their own emotions, create their own results, yadda yadda.
But the truth is more complex. If you’re selling something on the idea that it’s going to help people create more safety, for example;
- Get off the income rollercoaster and create consistent revenue;
- 5X your revenue so you can finally pay yourself real money; and
- Sign one new client a week, adding 6 figures and income security to your bottom line.
Or you’re selling them belonging with your words;
- Join our sisterhood of amazing business owners, and gain immediate access to a community who will lift you up and refer you to their networks across the world; and
- We’ll work together in an intimate setting, where you’ll always have my eyes on your business.
Or in pictures e.g.
- Pictures of you and your clients having a blast on retreat; and
- Showing women they aspire to get in the room with, and having those women “talk to them” like they’re going to be hanging out in your promotional videos.
Or your selling significance e.g.
- Go from hidden gem to go-to expert;
- Captivate your audience so they’ll never look elsewhere ever again; and
- Automate your authority with content omnipresence.
Then you’re actually speaking directly to people’s wounds. You’re not doing something “wrong” by doing so, in that you’re just doing what you’ve been taught, but it will absolutely, 100% guaranteed, attract people who have work to do on those wounds, after all you’re literally speaking right to them.
Consequently, there will be many points where client engagement and performance are negatively impacted by loss of safety, belonging and significance (today we’re only talking about when you share testimonials, but there are many others). And as someone who intentionally marketed that way, at least some people, some of the time, are going to hold you accountable for that.
When you are the buyer… (keep reading if you’re the business owner too)
As much as it might look like it, what’s really happening here isn’t as simple as basic envy/jealousy. It’s the true and sacred rage of the dark feminine. When a client feels that rage, that feeling of disconnection and the emptiness of not having something, that pain is a reminder to ask, who has taken from you? Or is still taking from you? And where are you taking from yourself?
And whilst the surface answer might be “Marianna who sold me this BS programme!” the deeper answer that takes from all of us is patriarchy. Patriarchy spawned capitalism and consumerism, and with it marketing. Just as patriarchy is a system that takes so much from all of us (yes, even most men) conventional marketing is designed to TAKE from people. At its foundation, the entire concept of a competitive market and the dream of an ever increasing profit margin is one of exploitation – it’s literally driving towards taking as much and giving as little as possible.
Because patriarchy is internalised (ie. we’re doing it to ourselves, even when we don’t know we are, because it’s a lens we’ve never not been looking through), when we feel this sacred rage, most people will think it’s something wrong with them. Even if they do identify their feelings, they experience themselves as “bad” for having them.
Where you (or your clients) are likely to feel this the most, is when different aspects of “taking” are happening across your life, emptying your resources all at the same time. So if you do find yourself feeling that loss of safety, belonging and/or significance, one of the best things you can start to do is ask yourself;
- What out there is taking your power without your permission?
- And where have you taken from yourself to give what you didn’t have? To your husband? Your children? Your clients?
- Do you take away your own light? Your own worthiness? Your validity? Your greatness?
If you’re comparing yourself to others, remember that just one seemingly very small difference can be everything e.g. having one toddler in daycare is wildly different from having 3 or 4 kids of different ages who are getting dropped off at all different activities. Or who are homeschooling. If you’re the service provider, never ever (ever) compare clients. Not to yourself, or to anyone else. Because realities just don’t work like that.
The latter woman has to expand more in so many more ways, just to hit the same baseline, because she has to carry all of those people and relationships WITH her as she rises. And the pain of knowing that is great. The pain of living it is greater. If both those two women create the same thing, it is not the same thing. What overflows for one, is nowhere near enough for the other. One can fully serve herself and overflow. The other is in scarcity. She needs her village. And the world has made us villageless.
Sacred rage is the creator and the destroyer. Your rage, that when you master it, can change the world in one huge sweeping motion. She is beautiful, and calls to be loved, honoured, and listened to. She screams that you deserve more. And you do.
The dark feminine rages and the good girl speaks patriarchy. Only one can win. Sadly, many supposedly healing modalities actually help restore you to “factory settings” by reinforcing patriarchal values. You work through being on with having been exploited or being called out for exploiting others, instead of letting the dark feminine burn through the world and change it.
This is why I only know of one other female coach in the online space who is the sole provider for her family (and she’s single and not supporting her partner too). Because rising through the rage is excruciating. You have to be willing to see the darkest things inside yourself and love them too.
Sacred rage shows you terrible things because hurt people hurt people. Witnessing those desires and the pain at other people’s wins is the symptom. Only by looking, can you discover the cause.
There is so much power in finally witnessing what your rage is. The dark feminine may tell you that your husband isn’t pulling his weight, or you wish you didn’t have kids, or that it would have been better if your ex-partner had died (or even picture k-lling him), or other such things.
She may rage that certain people get social benefits and you don’t or that the medical system is grossly unfair. Whatever it is, don’t judge her for holding what you might want to call “evil thoughts.” Instead, trust that she shows you where you don’t feel supported. She shows you where scarcity lives. She shows you a pathway to power.
When you feel that the system is unfair for you (remembering that every system is not down to individuals, but to the culture that carries them), it is unfair for everyone. Some people just happen to benefit today, but it rarely stays that way. Standing in the fire of changing that, speaking truth to that, you become the phoenix.
When I think back to when my rage was always there, under the surface, waiting for the right (but SO wrong) trigger to manifest fully and instantaneously in my being, it was always because of all the sexual trauma I’ve experienced in my life.
Each time I leaned in was a quantum leap. The first time was my stripper day. Life changing, affirmative work that catapulted me back onto my path and into a more powerful version of me and a much bigger money mindset.
More recently, I felt rage seeing women in my niche enjoying their bodies in a bathtub full of money, publicly sexualising themselves and (I felt) making the world a more dangerous place for all women. It hurt me that those women had bathtubs of money, and I had a brand new shiny PhD that could actually help people, but I couldn’t be visible.
My rage was at the people who did bad things to me when I was little. At myself for still being afraid abusers would find me and come after me if I was visible. That others would abandon, shame or betray me because I was broken. Old messages I thought I’d outgrown.
I raged at the world too, for being the kind of place that when I was at a conference presenting and it came to question time, a male colleague stood up and answered MY questions and I let him.
But it was safer to imagine my rage was at those women. That’s why their post triggered me so much. Part of me was buying into the illusion as it tried to keep me safe and part was trying to say, “here is the mirror! Use this to find out what I’m trying to tell you here.” The internal struggle was what hurt so much.
Being with the rage and pain reforged me and I came out stronger, willing to be visible and different. Willing to dismantle and build anew. Those pictures of the women in baths and the bikini babe manifestors just seemed too funny to me. Because suddenly, I knew the truth I’d been battling with all along…
- I am worthy of that success;
- I am capable of creating it;
- I am ready to let go of everything that is holding me back; and
- I have so much more to give than anything I’ve seen in this space
It was not believing that, and choosing to believe instead that the universe was somehow bestowing blessings on others, that hurt me. Believing in my greatness set me free. Again, it was life changing, affirmative work that catapulted much further down my path, into an even more powerful version of me and a truly expansive abundance mindset that extends far beyond money.
But I had to look into the darkest place to find it.
The more you are in the feminine, the more you must come to accept all of it, light and dark is within you, just like mother earth. She is life giving and she is molten lava.
The more you fully experience yourself rather than suppressing yourself, the more you will experience the light and the dark of it in others, and they in you. When you can hold that too, and love the other and you, you will have gone beyond where almost all women living at this time will ever dare to go. That is truly leadership.
Remember, when the dark feminine visits you, it’s to raze the ground and raise the phoenix. She reminds you:
- You are worthy of success;
- You are capable of creating it;
- You are ready to let go of everything that is holding you back; and
- You have so much more to give than anything you’ve seen in this space.
You don’t have to fight the world. You just have to lead it somewhere new. The pain that runs through you is a call to believe in you.
That’s what the “dark feminine” really is. Not scary, or evil, or wrong, or bad. Just counter to what patriarchy demands you: the call to choose you.
Which brings us back to testimonials and selling.
Sacred rage is trying to tell us something. Trying to say “stop buying into your woundedness” and “stop buying into lies that teach you to sell by hurting others.” It’s trying to show you the man behind the curtain, and each time it only has a few seconds, before the curtain is pulled closed again, and you’re back inside the illusion.
One of the deadliest weapons of this of marketing is perpetuating illusion through lack of context. You’re continually shown the attractive bit of the picture, without ever seeing what’s really happening behind the scenes.
- You see the fancy car, but not that they’ve only hired it for an hour for the photoshoot;
- You hear about the £150k month, but not that their business expenses were £155k; and
- You hear about the client who 10x-ed her income in 10 weeks, but not about the 100 clients who never made their investment back.
And you’re taught to sell that way. Actually, many people aren’t making successful sales because of this: their whole being revolts against selling this way, even though their conscious mind “believes” the teachers who say they have to do it this way.
However, there are ways to sell that are beautiful, non-exploitative, and which give people more than they ever imagined they were getting, every time they buy. This way of marketing is the reason so many people stay with me for so long, and that my business is built on referrals: it’s about speaking to the person who is already working with you. It’s about sharing context.
Context is everything (not content). Context shows the starting materials, the bumps on the road, the hard feelings. It lets people see that every blessing comes with lessons, and every lesson comes with blessings. And when it comes to context and truth sharing, there’s no great way to share client stories than case studies. Long form stories written about clients, written with the client, done by an interviewer outside of the business, gives people what they need to see the work from a place of wholeness and curiosity.
Instead of triggering sacred rage by forcing out-of-context illusions onto people, they show truth, and depth, and that matters. And when people buy because of case studies, they know so much more about what they’re buying, than when they buy because of “My client Suzie just had a $10k day! If you want to be my next success story, hit me up right away because there’s only one spot left for 2023!” If you’re a buyer, looking for case studies is a great way to see whether you can really see yourself in that work. And if you’re a business owner, sharing case studies can help with client retention, referrals, overall client results and reducing customer service issues.
In case you were wondering… the case studies you’ll find here are independently collected, fully placed within context, and compiled by a professional.
xoxo,
Dr. Morgana
