Earlier this week one of my interior design clients, who recently went through a massive brand transformation, including a name change, told me she was feeling worried because business seemed a slower than it was last year at this time.

“I’m busy”, she said.  “But not busy like I’m normally busy.”

Although the feedback on her new image has been phenomenal among her family, friends and community, she was noticing people noticing the changes she’s made. She worried that the people who were telling her they were reading her blog and “following” her on Facebook, might also think she was “too big” for those little jobs that got her company started, jobs for which she was very, very grateful.

“Talk me off the cliff,” she said.

Leap And The Net Will Appear I’m big into tapping into your intuition when it comes to making choices for your business but sometimes, when we’re in the midst of change, especially expansion, what we’re usually tapping into is fear (or ego, but we’ll save that for another day).

I reminded my client about a few things.  The first was that in starting this process, there would be results from the change.  I asked her if she was truly ready to make the leap, because we couldn’t predict what the response to those results would be on the other side.  She was.  She was more brave than scared, and she was willing to give up what wasn’t working.  More importantly, she was no longer willing to ignore her heart’s pull toward something more, even though it was unknown.

I told her that yes her new image may have made some clients with smaller budgets feel more insecure about approaching her.  But I reminded her that those weren’t her clients.  In fact all of the positive feedback proved it.  I asked her if she was happy with the results of her rebrand.  She was.  Then I asked her if she liked not being “slammed” with work.  She shrugged her shoulders.

“Is this a money thing?” I asked.

She nodded sheepishly.

False. Evidence. Appearing. Real.

I reminded my client that when we started our work together, one of the main reasons was because she was run ragged with smaller jobs that weren’t allowing her to serve at the level she wanted to.  She couldn’t see how she could possibly expand her business without taking on even more jobs, the thought of which exhausted her.  That thought was also keeping her stuck, maybe even a little bit bored, with the scale of projects she was attracting.  Now a year later, her slate was more manageable and she had the increased family time that was a priority for the way she’s choosing to do life and business.“Did you run your numbers?”  I asked her.  She hadn’t.

Turns out that despite the fact that she had fewer jobs—jobs that BTW she’s excited about—my client’s sales are up almost 30% from last year.

Getting exactly what you want is unfamiliar territory for many of us.  We think surely there are consequences because I’m feeling so good.  But the thing is just like any other belief, what you think about the way you have to do business can be changed.  Remember, you’re in business to do life on your terms.

Did I mention my client and I haven’t even started the “marketing” part yet?