Charlotte Lloyd

No, you can’t “pick my brain.”
I get this DM a lot.

It usually sounds harmless.
Friendly. Casual. Low effort.

But this is really something else:

“Can you give me the thing you spent years learning…
for FREE… with no context… and no commitment?”

That’s not curiosity.
That’s outsourcing thinking.

What gets me is this:
Advice without context is useless.
And experience without effort doesn’t transfer.

When I help someone, I don’t give opinions.
I look at the full picture.

Their goals.
Their constraints.
Their blind spots.

That’s not a quick voice note. That’s work.
And I don’t resent that. I respect it.

Which is exactly why I don’t give it away casually.

If you want insight, there are three clean paths:

↳ Ask a 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 question you’ve already thought through
↳ Engage publicly and learn from what I share openly
↳ Or pay for structured help where the advice sticks

What I don’t do anymore:

• unpaid consulting disguised as coffee
• vague asks with no follow-through
• “just 15 minutes” that turn into extraction

This isn’t about being unavailable.
It’s about valuing the thing people say they want.

If you’re building something you believe in,
You’ll understand this boundary immediately.

And if this post annoys you?
That’s probably the point.
Respect goes both ways.

The most expensive client I fired was worth $120K annually.

It was a sales training and we were about to extend the contract.

I want to share this story to impact others.

The owner micromanaged the entire project.
Undermined decisions in meetings.

For months, I told myself:
"It's just his style. The revenue matters."

Then one day I turned around and said enough
Not because of the work, because of him.
That's when I realized:

Tolerating a bully doesn't just cost you respect.
It costs you your best people.
I fired him the next week.

And if you don't confront it
You teach everyone watching that your silence is for sale.

4 ways to deal with it in business and personal life:

𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆.
"That's not how we speak to people here."
Don't wait for it to become a pattern.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀.
Private support is kind; public support is culture.
When someone's being undermined, your silence speaks volumes.

𝗥𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲.
Recognize the person who raised their hand
Not the loudest voice in the room.

𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱.
Standing up can mean addressing it directly, escalating it, or walking away.

This summer, my daughter was called a "gremlin" at camp for her wonky teeth.

The name-calling spread.
Half the parents pulled their kids.

We chose to stay, not to "tough it out,"
But to stand up, speak up, and teach her that her voice works.

I learned (again) that leadership is parenting in public.
How you handle bullies, clients, colleagues, or team members
is your culture.

Not the mission statement on your wall.
Not the values in your deck.

The decisions you make when it's uncomfortable.

PS. On Nov 7, I'm giving a masterclass in the The HoLT (members only) on how to write a cold email that gets replies.

My fee will go to the Autistic Society, in honour of children like my daughter who see the world differently and deserve to be heard.

One uncomfortable topic I chatted with a client on...

Thinking referrals are your safety net. They're your ceiling.

You tell yourself referrals are a good problem to have.

"At least I'm getting clients without spending on ads."
"Word of mouth means I'm doing great work."
"Why fix what isn't broken?"

What you're not admitting:
You're not in control. You're just getting lucky.
You've convinced yourself that luck is a business model.

Think about it:
• Can you predict your revenue 90 days from now?
• Can you decide to grow 50% next quarter?
• Do you know where your next 5 clients are coming from?

1️⃣ You're outsourcing your entire sales function to people who don't work for you and have zero incentive to send you business consistently.

2️⃣ You're capping your income at whatever your network happens to generate. Not what you're capable of earning.

3️⃣ You're one bad month away from desperation mode
scrambling to take clients you don't even want.

65% of businesses depend on referrals
According to The New York Times

The coaches and consultants scaling past $10K–$30K/month?
They stopped waiting and started building.

If you don't own the relationship, you don't own the revenue.

Clip made with OpusClip

Agree?

Indecision is the most expensive mistake.

A year from now, you’ll either be ahead, or still thinking about it.

I started my business at 45, so it's never too late.
But the sooner, the better.

Did I feel scared? YES
Did I feel fear investing in myself? YES
Did I make a complete pivot here with my offer? YES

I remember staring at the payment page for
my first big investment, my heart racing.

What if it didn’t work? What if I wasn’t ready?

But staying stuck wasn’t an option.
So I took the leap and it changed everything.

You don’t fail because you lack skill.
You fail because you hesitate.

→ Waiting for the "right time."
→ Overthinking your next move.
→ Saying you need one more thing before you start.

Nothing changes until you do.

My clients who scale past
$10K, $20K, even $50K months?

They aren’t the ones with:
The biggest audience or fanciest offers.

They’re the ones who:
✅ Take messy action before they feel ready.
✅ Show up consistently, even when no one’s watching.
✅ Get help instead of guessing their way forward.

🚫 Perfect offers don’t get results.
🚫 Waiting doesn’t create momentum.
🚫 Fear won’t pay your bills.

Action does.

If you’re serious about building a business that gives you
FREEDOM.

It’s time to move.

♻️ Repost to inspire others to move

No, you can’t “pick my brain.”
You’re asking for paid thinking for free.

It usually sounds harmless.
Friendly. Casual. Low effort.

But this is really something else:

“Can you give me the thing you spent years learning…
for FREE… with no context… and no commitment?”

That’s not curiosity.
That’s outsourcing thinking.

What gets me is this:
Advice without context is useless.
And experience without effort doesn’t transfer.

When I help someone, I don’t give opinions.
I look at the full picture.

Their goals.
Their constraints.
Their blind spots.

That’s not a quick voice note. That’s work.
And I don’t resent that. I respect it.

Which is exactly why I don’t give it away casually.

If you want insight, there are three clean paths:

↳ Ask a 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 question you’ve already thought through
↳ Engage publicly and learn from what I share openly
↳ Or pay for structured help where the advice sticks

What I don’t do anymore:

• unpaid consulting disguised as coffee
• vague asks with no follow-through
• “just 15 minutes” that turn into extraction

This isn’t about being unavailable.
It’s about valuing the thing people say they want.

If you’re building something you believe in,
You’ll understand this boundary immediately.

And if this post annoys you?
That’s probably the point.
Respect goes both ways.

Hustling wasn't what built Canva, discipline did.
I want to talk about why this is important.

Canva's $26B valuation is excpetional.
But let's talk about what they're missing.

Melanie Perkins didn't just build design software.
She mastered the art of elegant business building.

At 19, she was teaching design basics.
At 22, working from her mom's living room.
By 25, she'd faced 100+ VC rejections.

Her turning point?
Meeting Bill Tai - who saw beyond the "girl from Perth" label.

2013: Canva launches
2019: Unicorn status
2021: $40B valuation

Something else makes her different:

1. She ignored the "hustle harder" playbook
Instead, she stayed bootstrapped
until the product was perfect.

2. She built real culture
92% employee satisfaction isn't an accident.
It's intentional leadership.

3. She focused on impact over ego
30% of Canva's equity? Pledged to charity.

The numbers back this up:

• 135M+ monthly users
• 190 countries
• $1.5B annual revenue

Why I like her story and what it really means...

Success isn't about perfect timing.
It's about persistence + purpose.

Melanie proves what I tell my clients:

The best businesses are built on conviction, not convenience.

♻️ Share with someone building something meaningful

PS. Do you like this type of post? First time I put together this type of content.
Share with someone else to give them a boost and repost if you want to see more of this content.

The biggest pricing mistake?

Thinking it's about finding what the market will bear.

Premium pricing isn't about charging more.
It's about architecting scarcity in a world of abundance.

When you're scaling past your first million, the rules change completely.

Your competition isn't other service providers.

It's the client's internal option to "figure it out themselves."

And that changes everything about how you position value.

The premium market psychology is counterintuitive:

→ Higher prices signal exclusivity, not expense
→ Scarcity creates urgency faster than discounts
→ Premium buyers purchase certainty, not solutions
→ Market leadership comes from pricing confidence

The sophisticated buyers in your market aren't
Price shopping. They're risk shopping.

They want to know:

Will this solve the problem completely?
Can I trust this person with my biggest challenges?
What happens if this goes wrong?

Your pricing architecture should answer those questions before they ask them.

Value architecture at the premium level:

Layer 1: Core transformation (what they came for)
Layer 2: Risk mitigation (what they actually buy)
Layer 3: Status elevation (what they tell others about)

The price isn't the product.
The exclusivity is the product.

When you position yourself at the top of the market,
You're not competing on deliverables.
You're competing on confidence.

Premium clients pay for certainty in an uncertain world.

Your job isn't to be affordable.
Your job is to be irreplaceable.

The moment you can walk away from any deal without hesitation?

That's when premium pricing becomes automatic.

♻️ Repost if premium positioning changed your business trajectory

I am the opposite of what success is 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 to look like in my industry.

I didn’t start young. I started at 43.

I didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge. (Leeds uni in fact)
I don’t have an MBA.
I didn’t follow a neat, linear path.

And I still built an internationally recognised business.
People were generous with their advice:

“You’re too late for this.”
“This industry doesn’t work online.”
I even tried to do it the “right” way.

I tried building a fashion business on Instagram.
It failed. (Yes you can laugh!)
I've rebuilt it now though. (after growing here)

I didn't lack effort or want of trying.
The platform rewarded aesthetics over substance.

It pushed me to perform instead of think.
To simplify instead of explain.
To sell a vibe instead of value.

So I stopped forcing it and moved to LinkedIn instead.
With zero expectations on how it would go.
That’s where things changed.

Nope, I didn't crack the algorithm
My experience finally counted for something.

I stopped borrowing other people’s narratives and wrote my own.

I used age as leverage, not a liability.
I trusted lived experience over credentials.

I built in public where clarity mattered more than charisma.

I modernised an industry that preferred tradition over progress.

Most limits aren’t real. They’re inherited.

You can wait for people to buy into your vision.

Or you can build it so clearly that opting out feels irrational.

I chose the second.

What’s the rule you’ve been following that no longer deserves your loyalty?

PS. If you want to follow me on instagram for more behind the scenes,

Here you go
https://lnkd.in/eBpBrsBG

📸 From IG days pre LinkedIn in Guatemala on a biz trip.

Some days I don’t feel inspired.
I feel tired. Distracted. Avoidant.
And the work still needs to get done.

Motivation is a terrible partner.
It shows up late. Leaves early.
And disappears completely on the hard days.

What moves things forward is the boring work you do whether you feel like it or not.

The follow up you send when scrolling would be easier.
The conversation you have when avoidance feels safer.
The work you do when no one’s watching.

That’s not inspiration. That’s habit.
And habits beat motivation every time.

Study after study shows the same thing:
consistent behaviors outperform big bursts of effort.

Because outcomes are a side effect.
Habits are the work.

A year from now, you won’t remember the days you felt inspired.

You’ll remember the days you didn’t and showed up anyway.

Post inspo and image from Adam Grant

➕ Follow Charlotte for more on habits + high trust deals
♻️ Repost to give others kick into discipline.

Everyone keeps saying: “You need to be in the room.”
Fine. Go to the room.
But be honest with yourself, is it actually producing what you think it is?

I’ve done the rooms. In person events.
Hundreds of them. Cannes alone, 13 times.
Corporate life was events, dinners, panels, repeat.

And for years, LinkedIn wasn’t even a priority.
I learned the hard way:

Most networking is motion without leverage.

You meet people.
You have good conversations.
You exchange cards.

You promise to “catch up.”
And then… nothing compounds.

What changed everything for me wasn’t another room.
It was building signal instead of relying on proximity.

That shift is what helped me grow an almost 7-figure business.
It’s what gave me freedom over my time.

Options over my work.
And the ability to show up, actually show up — with my family.

Not because I stopped networking.
But because I stopped pretending it was a growth strategy.

If progress only happens when you’re physically present,
you don’t have leverage. You have a dependency.

Networking still has its place.
It’s just wildly overrated as a primary engine.

Rooms give you access.
Clear thinking gives you pull.
Go to events. Shake hands. Have dinners.

Just don’t confuse being busy networking
with building something that works when you’re not there.

That difference is everything.

📸 Photo from one of those 13 events in Cannes.

For serious business + selling tips, apply here: https://lnkd.in/e_Tkkq4E

1 "painful" thing with 66 days left this year:

Getting a big fat no is a good thing.

A no brings clarity.
It sets boundaries.
It clears space for the right clients.

What’s worse than hearing no?
Clients who don't take responsibility for their progress.

It’s NOT your job to do the work for them.

Your role is to guide.
Not to carry them every step of the way.

Before shifting blame..
clients should be asking themselves:

→ Did I follow the process laid out for me?
→ Did I seek solutions beyond what my coach gave me?
→ Did I ask for clarification or just wait for answers?

If they didn’t, that’s on them, not you.

As a coach, your time is best spent with clients who:

Are COMMITTED.

Your focus on creating impact,
Not chasing accountability.

Your energy is for guiding action,
Not fixing excuses.

I know how:

Frustrating it is when a client won’t follow through.
One offhand comment can throw you off balance
Especially when you’ve invested in their success.

→ A no isn’t rejection—it’s redirection.
→ My role is to challenge hesitations, not own outcomes.

The best clients? They take ownership:

→ They follow through.
→ They learn from mistakes.
→ They act, even when it’s hard.

And a no isn’t failure. It’s a filter.
It frees you to focus on clients ready to do the work.

So challenge them to decide.

Build a business where no becomes an opportunity
And your focus stays on the right clients.

Thanks to those who attended yesterday's event
If you want to get the AI prompts and GPTs
Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/e_Tkkq4E