Starting a business during the pandemic could leave you worrying whether or not you're missing out on the value-add of meeting with clients in person. Our viewer Prianca Naik, who started an online business life coaching moms in male-dominated fields, is asking herself exactly that. So, businesswoman extraordinaire and "Shark" Barbara Corcoran is here to help and explain that it's possible you are, but also possible you're not at all.
"Whenever you're with a person in person, you can read them better, you can read between the lines, the nuances, you could pick up the emotion, you could see if they're happy or not. People pretend a lot online, but it's hard to pretend in person. So, of course you would give better advice and help people more in person, but I don't think that's the question you should be asking," explains Barbara.
Instead, Barbara explains that it's crucial to look at your clients—in Prianca's case, that's working moms (who are often extremely busy)—and determine from there if in-person components would be more valuable. Barbara argues that it could be more difficult for this clientele to find the time to physically go to a location for life coaching, but she says the best thing to do is ask them.
"Most entrepreneurs try to anticipate what the customer wants, but they forget to just plain ask them, so I think that that's the order of business," Barbara says.
