Early into the "I Haven't Made It Yet Series" self doubt crept in as the sales hadn't yet. (You can head back to Episode 2 to find out about it).
It's been a quiet few months in 2024, showing up every day working on the marketing, the lead gen, sales techniques... you name it, I'm doing it in some way. And despite those efforts, I hadn't yet secured a sale in 2024.
But this week, I finally did it.
Because this isn't like a PAYE job. You don't know when the next commitment to pay is coming in, when the next referral or lead is going to be the right fit, it doesn't follow a schedule.
Instead, it's blind faith (paired with course correcting where necessary) matched with strategy and consistency. And yes, I've made the sale, and I'll be celebrating and sharing it with you - because a sale is a celebration no matter what when it's in your own business.
And so the strategy, consistency and self-belief now needs to continue to keep working on the next sale too!
Early into the "I Haven't Made It Yet Series" self doubt crept in as the sales hadn't yet. (You can head back to Episode 2 to find out about it).
It's been a quiet few months in 2024, showing up every day working on the marketing, the lead gen, sales techniques... you name it, I'm doing it in some way. And despite those efforts, I hadn't yet secured a sale in 2024.
But this week, I finally did it.
Because this isn't like a PAYE job. You don't know when the next commitment to pay is coming in, when the next referral or lead is going to be the right fit, it doesn't follow a schedule.
Instead, it's blind faith (paired with course correcting where necessary) matched with strategy and consistency. And yes, I've made the sale, and I'll be celebrating and sharing it with you - because a sale is a celebration no matter what when it's in your own business.
And so the strategy, consistency and self-belief now needs to continue to keep working on the next sale too!
This week I made a sale. Now that might be like surely you've been making sales. It's a business. For those that didn't already hear the earlier episode of I Haven't Made it Yet, which kind of prompted some of this, but it was episode number two, where I was talking about, like when you experience the self-doubt, no matter how good you are at bringing yourself up again, sometimes that self-doubt takes over and I had been struggling, understandably, with the idea that I hadn't made a sale in 2024.
Speaker 1:
Now my plan for the year, when I'm sticking with something you know reasonable in terms of a goal, was $50k for the year and therefore, based on my packages and on average, that basically meant I only needed one sale every single month. So I don't think that's too high an expectation. It's quite reasonable. But then when it didn't happen in January and February, that can feel really, really difficult. That said, I also had to look at what I know about buying and the way that I was working, in that you don't know where it's all going to come from and how it's going to come. I was looking at it and going well, naturally based on brand awareness, on being aware of people in the pipeline, bringing them through time, etc. To build trust for people to be ready. Then ultimately this is going to be skewed towards the end of the year and I'd kind of succumb to the fact that who knew when a sale was going to come in? And okay, I had other streams to support my income and it would be quite nice if I could start to generate something in the business that was a bit more solid, one of the bigger packages that I have. But ultimately I can make that happen. I can't make anything happen. I can take lots of daily actions to keep pushing forwards, to generate leads, to nurture leads, to keep moving people through that pipeline to see if there's a good fit and to make that happen when it is the right time. But ultimately you don't know when it's going to happen. Not in the early days, not when you don't have leads waiting to work with you and people just to tip over the edge into saying definitely yes as opposed to yes, just not sure when. So the absolute joy when someone very easily said yes.
Speaker 1:
It was our first call together, our first exchange personally. It had come through a referral, admittedly, so had a little bit of social not social proof, but just that little bit more confidence that someone can have if you get a referral, and this is what I work on in terms of when we're working on the podcasts and getting people to listen to them. Ultimately, word of mouth is one of the strongest ways of doing that, because people trust what people are told by them and personal recommendation, especially if the person that is telling them is someone that they trust deeply and trust their judgment of things. So we had this one call and I mean, as far as I was concerned, he looked like a good candidate and I didn't go for the close in the call. Now maybe my sales coach would have said I probably should have done. I don't think it's because I doubted myself, but I followed my intuition and I treat these first calls as first calls. I'm not there to sell to you, it's your decision to do that, and they would argue possibly that had I avoided that and if I continue that behaviour, then it's possible that I'm going to lose sales because I'm not closing people that are basically saying, yes, let's do this.
Speaker 1:
But whilst I felt confident, this person was very interested I was also aware of the stage that our relationship was at and I actually didn't go for the close because I said, well, I'll send the details over, let's lock down a time to talk about this at another point, give you time to look at it, ask questions etc. And if you decide earlier that you want to go ahead with it, then by all means we can do that and make our future call the first call that we have to get, as opposed to another call to discuss the package. And even in response to that, he had said you know what I like that you didn't go for the close. So maybe it was intuition, maybe it was listening, maybe it was being aware, whereas if someone's chomping at the bit, like when could I start? When's the first session, then I'm gonna go for the close, right. But when someone's still deciding or you know they've made that first early decision to me it felt right and I have to follow that. And I suppose that's the only way that I can ever stick with what I've done, which is to follow the intuition, because over the past five years now, following my intuition has served me incredibly well and anytime that I have delayed on it it's caused me some problems or, you know, it's just caused a delay.
Speaker 1:
So when I jump back to my relationship, my previous relationship and getting married and then needing to leave within a year. Had I not followed that, I wouldn't be where I am now. Well, there's signs earlier that I ignored my intuition, yes, and I wish I hadn't, or I don't ever really wish that it would change, because I don't think you can ever ever wish that on yourself. Otherwise, you just live in regret. What I mean is, in hindsight, it would have been much easier that entire process if I had paid attention earlier on. There's been some other little moments that haven't been quite so life-changing, and I think about moving to podcasting.
Speaker 1:
I had the idea to move to social media over two years ago and I chose not to because I was like well, you're invested in this, you can't run both. You love the other one right now. You got to go with that. Now that comes back to. There's a concept around this and I can't remember the name of it, but sort of like the fact that because you've invested, you don't want to give up on something. So you could have said that about my relationship. My relationship was six years long, something like that. So at the first indications that this was possibly not going to go well or that they were going to be bumpy, bumps in the road ahead. I was looking from a perspective of this is what I've already got and this is the time I've put in the effort, like how can I throw all of that away inverted commas and then you can say the same for the business. Now, luckily, I could see through it for the relationship and I had enough to go. If I'm at the end of my life, if I'm on my death bed, like how am I going to feel about this if I don't action it? And that got me moving quicker than anything.
Speaker 1:
And I suppose when I was still doing the life coaching versus moving into social media, there wasn't that element of urgency. I don't think I did that exercise but, thinking about it, I don't think I'd go, oh, you know the end of the world, because if this works, then I'll be really pleased with it. So there was still some belief in it, there was still some need for it to want to do it and I was enjoying it. And so, whilst it wasn't the most profitable although I think I could go back now and make it more profitable from what I've learned in two years and even just in the oh, what are we on now. So eight months, nine months of focusing in on social media, getting clarity on messaging, kind of just starting over with that blank slate, because it can be scary to start over. But with Chantel the coach, with the life coaching, I had so much that I had brought to that brand with me and I didn't want to let go of it. So it was hard to reset and to get the messaging and you end up complicate yourself and you overthink I was playing a fresh to social media.
Speaker 1:
I was firstly just doing social media and then people were like, oh, can you help with LinkedIn? I was like I have no idea about LinkedIn at that point. No, I was short form video on Instagram and TikTok and then I just still didn't want to just be known for that and I was like, well, that's not my process. My process isn't just short form video. Actually, we do it really clever ways, which is where the name for the clever content creator came up with clever ways that streamline. I've always leveraged the content I have. It hasn't just been let's make a new post every single day, let's leverage that post wherever it came from.
Speaker 1:
And where it came from was podcasting. Podcasting was the thing that sat at the top. It was no matter what I do, the podcast is there, and if I can then use that to get social media posts out, then I'll do it. So it actually only took me about three months into going into social media to go oh wait, no, this still doesn't feel right. I was actually prompted by a talk that Lisa Johnson was doing at the sales and closing super conference in Birmingham in September and she was like just getting over one thing and I was like this is, I knew this, I already knew this, I just haven't been following it. And lo and behold, that was when we went into podcasting.
Speaker 1:
So to have to rebrand or get known again, I'd already done three months of work getting known as social media, as content, and then I had to reestablish myself as podcasting. So that's been a delay, as it were, or it had an effect, not a very long one, admittedly, but from September to December it's kind of working out in my head as to what this looks like, what I'm going to do, and I had two initial clients then and then since then it was like, okay, right, I need to rebrand in my local network and let people know what I do, find more people utilize that network and that's kind of what December to March has been three months of that and it has been very quiet. I've been thankful for the clients I have because they keep me busy, keep me on top of what exactly they need and then what I can communicate to an audience. But the sale coming in finally is just wonderful. It's something that I always said I would celebrate in something, because you have to celebrate every single win and sharing it on here is one way of doing that speaking it out loud, sharing how precious every single sale is. Now, don't get me wrong, I've had some very, very small sales in between for Content Creation Club. That's kind of like a networking market research opportunity to support people with ongoing content creation and hold some accountability in general, and I really love it. I love the community aspect of it. When it comes to this, which is the lifeblood of my business, actually getting some money in and we've also been pivoting into done for you services and that's an exciting realm that complements this strategic side that I work on. It just everything is coming together in terms of creation.
Speaker 1:
Having a sale is a lovely little cherry on top for the last few months of work, obviously hoping that that's not the only sale for the next month or two, but ultimately the good goal is 50K. The best goal is up at 200K and that sounds lofty and it does make me feel scared. The reality is that that's the real goal. 50k would be very impressive, I think, from going from zero to 50K. In my head logically sounds great, but at the same time it's not scary enough. It almost seems doable and if it's doable then I'm going to be playing safe. Part of me has to go okay. Well, even if we're not 50K yet, let's just keep aiming for 20K. That's part of me. Let's keep aiming for the 200K and that has been solidified by me listening to 10 times as easy as two times, which has just said you don't need to know how to work it out to get there. I do know my numbers in sales and tracking.
Speaker 1:
By the year I wouldn't be anywhere near on track, but there is still a majority of the year to go.
Speaker 1:
That one sale could be the domino of the rest. We're probably going to see some moments of feast and famine where it's not that stable in that sense yet. But there is a pipeline, there are leads, there are people to continue conversations with, to not get caught up in the one client, obviously serve that person, but keep on pushing forward. And if you're in that same position where, like where is this next sale, like where's it coming from, you do just have to keep going and ultimately there must be a cut off point for, okay, I need to change this, I need to update this, I need to pivot, I need to listen, but you keep on evolving, you keep on taking action and you keep on moving forwards and a sale will eventually come, just like my sales coach said, just like a sausage machine pardon me, a sausage machine where eventually a sausage will form entirely and just pop out a fun little analogy or visual for you to take away with you after this episode of big vision, business owners and the I haven't made it yet series.
