Why Clients Pay to Work with Me - My Surprising Superpowers

Last year I took on a project to interview clients and stakeholders because I realized that what powers word of mouth marketing, referrals in particular, is what clients say about us.

I felt I couldn’t in good conscience ask you to ask your clients why they refer you if I didn’t do the work myself.

My integrity as a business coach comes from my own experiences; my willingness to do the difficult, sometimes scary work.

In this podcast I share what I learned and how you, too, can and should articulate your super powers in your marketing.

If you find the Marketing Root Work podcast valuable, please become a subscriber!

My mission is to change the way small business owners market themselves and it’s very important to me that I reach as many people as possible.

Transcript

01.12.26 [MRW Podcast] My Secret Sauce 
 

Well, hello and welcome to the Marketing Root Work Podcast. I am your host, Judy Murdoch, and today I'm going to be talking. About the topic of why clients pay to work with me, which is always like a, a really good thing to know, um, when we are professionals and, um, um, looking for right fit clients. So in an earlier substack, um, podcast, this was back in October, 2025, I talked about how I had avoided reading client testimonials. 

I have a hard time dealing with praise and I still have a hard time dealing with praise. Nonetheless, I took on a project to interview clients and stakeholders because I realized that what powers word of mouth marketing referrals and particular is what clients say about us. I felt I couldn't in good conscience ask you to ask your clients. 

Why they refer you if I didn't do the work myself. My integrity as a business coach comes from my own experiences, my willingness to do the difficult, sometimes scary work. So here's what I learned. The stakeholder interviews I did, were focused on teasing out the why, specifically, why these folks. Paid me to coach them. 

I also wanted to know what non-clients, usually collaborators thought was special and distinctive about me as a coach. Now, as experts and professionals, we believe that our value comes from two things. First are experience, skills, talent, and knowledge in our fields of expertise. Second specific measurable outcomes we help our clients get as a result of number one, this is why we are constantly upgrading our skills and knowledge. 

We take classes, we get new certifications, we attend conferences, and we reason that the time and money we spend is an inve. It's an investment in our professional growth in and in our income earning capacity. However, out of the 12 people I spoke to, only one person mentioned my marketing expertise as something that they felt was, um, I, I guess, a reason why they would work with me. 

What every single person did talk about was, and this is, um, um, this, this is taken from a lot of transcripts and I'm, I'm just summarizing it here. Judy is always genuine. She is human. She's someone I feel very comfortable being with. She's calm and thoughtful. I feel she's in my corner, that she believes in my ability, in my dreams and wants to help my business succeed. 

Judy is someone I absolutely trust, so this doesn't have a lot to do with my marketing savvy. It has everything to do with my character and my temperament. So this may bring up a question it did for me about, um, does professional competence matter? Should we even talk about it? After I analyzed the results, I did some additional research because I was curious about the role professional competence plays in a client's hiring decision. 

What I learned was that professional competence. It's absolutely important. However, when people make a hiring decision, they assume the person they are hiring is professionally competent. Now, this may or may not be true, but people assume that if someone is putting themselves out there as a professional, the person probably has a sufficient degree of skill, experience, and knowledge. 

So speaking to our professional abilities is important to a point, but that's not the element that makes or breaks someone's decision to hire us. The best I way I can summarize the role of what I'll call professional trust is that it is necessary but not sufficient. Professional competence isn't what tips the scale in your favor. 

So what does, well, what does is who we are as human beings. So in the case of my RightFit people, they want to work with me because they experience me as sincere, authentic, deeply caring, and thoughtful. They like working with me because I help them set realistic goals. I don't tell them their next offer is going to crush it People, Al also mentioned that they trusted me because I gently push back when I disagree, but I always disagree from a place of compassion and respect. 

I don't make them wrong. Some people appreciated how I would occasionally comment on their newsletters or email them with a question or idea. They felt I was thinking about them and that they mattered to me. I wanna say that most of these qualities are how the, how I'm wired. You know, they're just part of my temperament. 

And I wanna add to that. I've spent decades working with therapists and coaches and spiritual teachers, and that I've done a lot of healing so that these qualities can really shine. This is the root work I do. So we each have a special sauce. The qualities I shared are what my right fit clients appreciate about me as a business coach. 

My right fit clients tend to be people who are uncomfortable drawing lots of attention to themselves. They often prefer working in the background. A few said they were introverts and find conventional marketing and sales extremely uncomfortable. They like that. I help them find ways to, to connect that feel in alignment with who they are. 

My right for clients. Also like that I help them talk about what they do in a way that feels authentic and real. So they feel they can stand, they can stand securely in their value. So the thing to, you know, really keep in mind here is that the qualities my clients value about me may be quite different. 

From the qualities your clients love about you, if you are not sure what your superpowers are, why your RightFit clients want to hire you, I strongly encourage you to talk to them when you find out or when you know what your superpowers are. These distinctions. You put them in your marketing, you put them in your content, your marketing and content will be more effective if you share client success stories. 

You want to emphasize not only your technical mojo, but the personal qualities you bring to your client interactions. You want your communications to be client-centric, so you might be feeling some resistance, maybe a lot. No, I mean, no worries. What I'm surprised what I'm suggesting might be very different from the type of marketing you've been doing. 

And if you're like me, you may also feel a lot of discomfort around asking clients why they love working with you. As I've often said, there is nothing like marketing to trigger every single protective gremlin. You have the gremlins who tell you that. You're not smart enough, you're not talented enough, you're not good enough, et cetera, et cetera. 

The gremlins who want you to stay small and invisible, because when people don't know you exist, they can't hurt you still. If there is a part of you that recognizes the truth in what I'm sharing, please heed that voice because staying small and safe. Means you will never be able to make the difference you long to make in the world. 

I appreciate you Judy Murdoch, marketing, brute work, coach, writer and artist. 

I.