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Omnichannel
The Marketing and Business Podcast For Online Entrepreneurs! Learn the best approaches from experts as well as the psychology of what it means to be a human in business!
Omnichannel
Be Salesy: What it Takes to Run a Cash-Positive Healthy Business in 2024! | Natalie Bullen
Ready to learn what it takes to run a financially HEALTHY Business in 2024!
Learn how to build stronger relationships and increase your income with expert advice from Natalie Bullen, owner of Unapologetic Wealth. In this episode, Natalie shares her incredible journey from financial advisor to a sought-after sales consultant for six and seven-figure experts. You'll discover why traditional budgeting doesn't work for everyone and why increasing income can be a game-changer. Natalie also offers invaluable insights on the importance of clear communication and demystifying complex financial jargon.
Say goodbye to passive client attraction methods! We explore the necessity of direct outreach techniques such as DMs, emails, and phone calls to generate new business. Natalie shares her proven strategies for attracting and retaining clients, emphasizing the importance of understanding your ideal client's needs through ongoing communication. We discuss the power of being intentionally "salesy" and staying engaged with your market to keep your offerings relevant and effective. If word of mouth and referrals aren't cutting it anymore, this episode will provide you with a solid framework to elevate your client attraction game.
Overcome the fear of sales conversations and face the financial realities of running a business. Natalie dives deep into the mindset shifts needed for entrepreneurial success, discussing the fears and mental blocks that can hinder growth. Whether you're reluctant to make direct offers or struggling with maintaining a facade of success online, this episode tackles it all. Learn how to prioritize the sustainability of your business, handle financial challenges head-on, and embrace resilience. Don’t miss this empowering conversation packed with actionable insights and real-world advice to help you thrive in your entrepreneurial journey.
Sales is really about relationships and most people don't view it that way and they don't treat it that way and that's why they struggle. People want to pay me because they have a relationship with me, Even if they've never met me in person. They feel like they have a relationship with me because of how often I show up for my community. Right now, I'm the queen of messaging. There is no messaging that's going to get a person with no resources to pay you. That. That is atypical. That is a very rare occurrence that you're going to be able to finesse a person who is legitimately struggling to pay you money.
Speaker 2:uh well, natalie, thank you so much for coming to the podcast, the omni channel podcast, and, um well, this is my first time chatting with you on the show, so for those of you that are not familiar with your work, do you mind to introduce yourself a little bit and tell about yourself?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm Natalie Bullen and I own a company called Unapologetic Wealth. Unapologetic Wealth does sales consulting and coaching for six and seven figure experts people who are really smart attorneys, accountants and other people doing big work in the world and I teach them how to reliably, predictably, create qualified leads who buy their premium products. How do you get people in your funnel all the time so you know where your next sale is coming from?
Speaker 2:you get people in your funnel all the time, so you know where your next sale is coming from. I love that. And how did you get?
Speaker 1:into this whole thing. Like, how did it start it for you? It's so weird. I started off as a money coach. Okay, I used to be a financial advisor. I was working for one of the largest banks in the country. I was securities licensed and I worked in the local branch and then COVID hit and, as you know, the world kind of shut down.
Speaker 1:I had been doing financial literacy speeches out in the community, at churches and colleges and middle schools, and I missed it. So at the time, clubhouse was really popular and I said, well, I'll just speak on Clubhouse, I'll just go online and I'll talk for free. And people started asking me how can I pay you to speak? How can I pay you to coach me? And I'm like, why would you want to do that? I have a job, you know. And so I did strike out on my own. I left my job, you know.
Speaker 1:I think I got to the point where I didn't want to go back in the office and we were still in the office. So a lot of people are complaining now in 2024 about being in the office. Our branch was only closed for two weeks and then we were back open. So we were open during the entire height of COVID Branches closing, exposing ourselves to the public, having to wear a mask, having to sanitize our desk between clients being really understaffed. It was a nightmare. It was not great.
Speaker 1:So I quit and I started doing the exact same work that I was doing at the bank for people and I realized I didn't like it, because I don't want to put an adult on a budget. I don't want to tell an adult that they can't buy something, and most people I've learned don't actually have a budget problem. They have a income problem. If you made enough money to pay all your bills and have all of your wants met, you wouldn't need a budget. You see what I mean. Like, most people are disciplined enough to stay within the number, if the number is large enough.
Speaker 1:What I found was that most people just didn't make enough money, so it didn't matter what kind of budget I put them on, they were always going to struggle. So I decided to move into the make more money camp and actually help entrepreneurs to create more revenue, because they're not capped. If you try to coach people in nine to five jobs, how can they get a raise? They can ask, but if their boss says no, then that's the end of the conversation right, whereas an entrepreneur has a lot of capability to create more money for themselves. So I just felt like, as a niche, it was better suited for my skill set I love that.
Speaker 2:so one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show was your bold way of showing up online and your post and the way you express yourself. So do you think that, because you said you are working with smart people, you know accountants like business owners, yeah, and do you think smart people don't know how to communicate about what they have or what they are selling, or what's the issue there?
Speaker 1:I think smart people struggle to communicate at a level that an average person can understand. Smart people are hung up in their jargon and their way. So the attorneys, they speak legalese. Other people don't really know what they're talking about. So they know what they're talking about. Do you know what they're talking about?
Speaker 1:And so I find that if you've been educated say, you've got a PhD or MD or MBA, you've gone through programming that says you have to use big words, you have to be verbose, you have to write these long papers, you have to be competitive, you have to show how smart you are. Nobody buys from people because they're smart. No one has ever hired me because I was a smart person ever. You got to be able to make it simple enough for people to understand and luckily I'm pretty simple minded, so I'm really good at distilling down the complicated stuff that people talk about, because I'm like I don't know what you're talking about. Make it simpler, ok, make it simpler than that, all right there. And then we can maybe embellish it in words that the client would use instead of words that they would use, for instance, if you saw online that an accountant was harping on cash flow management, can you explain to me what cash flow management is.
Speaker 1:Most people can't. Most people actually don't know what cash flow management is. So you might be really invested as an accountant and think this is great content I'm putting out there. People don't know what cashflow management is. Now they know when they don't have enough money to pay their bills and they know it sucks. They know that. They know what it's like to not be able to pay their quarterly taxes because the money's not in their bank account. They know that. So if you can pull together the symptoms of lack of cashflow management and talk about those, that's going to be a better way for you to get clients than just using the jargon that your clients probably aren't familiar with. So that's how I help people. I help them use language that their client would actually use so they're not kind of just shooting in the dark hoping that people can figure out what they're talking about.
Speaker 2:And I guess just messaging is one aspect of your work, right? Because you said I mean, the way you show up is again pretty bold, and I think maybe tell me about how these people show up. Maybe they have this weird way of communicating, but are they showing up or what are their sales coming from? What do they usually go for when it comes to getting sales?
Speaker 1:My ideal client shows up. I do not sell to people who don't show up for themselves anymore, because nobody can help you if you're not willing to put yourself out there. But I will say they probably don't have an effective lead gen strategy. I'm always surprised at how few people have a dedicated, documented way to bring people into their world. Everyone under the sound of my voice should have that. If you are in business, there should be a way for people to get introduced to you, whether that's a lead magnet or a workshop or a video sales letter or add some way that you are every single month, every single week, you are pulling people in to learn about your work.
Speaker 1:Most people have not defined what that way is because they've been so used to word of mouth and referrals. And word of mouth and referrals worked until maybe a year ago, two years ago. So now there are people who've done millions in their business and they can't do it again because they have no marketing that's really working on a consistent basis. So now they're trying to learn how to market three, four, five, six years into the business. And it used to didn't matter what words they use to talk about their work, because they only sold to people who knew them or through people who knew them.
Speaker 1:So if I don't know you at all, but someone refers you to me and go, hey, she's really great at this thing, you should hire her. I'm much less likely to vet you personally because I trust that recommendation. But without that recommendation, I'm going to look at your site, I'm going to look at your copy, I'm going to look at your offers and if I can't figure out what's being sold, I'm just going to move to someone else. So a lot of people who are accustomed to making big money are struggling right now because they never set a foundation of how do I go out and get the business? They're used to the business coming to them and that's just not the industry norm anymore.
Speaker 2:So how do we go out and get the business like? What are the strategies that you recommend? Besides, you know you start to have to figure out your way of like how people meet you do you have a lead magnet, some kind of introduction to your work, but what else can they do to to get the business going?
Speaker 1:the fastest way to get business is to go out and ask for it. I am team prospecting. I think people should be in the DMs. I think people should be sending emails. I think people should pick up the phone. If you have a phone number for a prospect, you should pick up the phone and call them. I know that sounds like really crazy in 2024, but the fastest way to get the business is to make contact and ask for it. I'm selling this. It solves this problem. Do you or anyone that you're close to need this solution and you can make more money, right?
Speaker 1:I think client attraction has gotten popular because it seems passive. So people will say well, I don't really want a cold DM, I don't want a cold email. That seems salesy to me. I'm just going to wait for people to come to me and client attraction can work. But it takes time, it takes consistency and it takes you showing up a lot. You don't have to show up to prospect, not like you have to show up with client attraction. It's not as easy as people think. And what are you going to do in the meantime? So say you're on Facebook now, but you only post once a week. It's going to be a while before you have a client engine over there. So how are you going to make payroll on the first?
Speaker 2:Exactly. I love that. Any tips on not being too salesy or any tips on messaging when it comes to cold outreach that you teach your clients to do.
Speaker 1:See, I like being salesy. I don't see it as a bad thing. That's not something I'm trying to do.
Speaker 2:Let's make it as salesy as possible. What do we say?
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't mind if it's salesy. I mean, I think you really have to be clear on a couple of things. First, you have to be clear on who your ideal client is and what their real problem is. I find that a lot of people don't know because they don't actually talk to their clients. So maybe a good place to start for somebody new to prospecting would be to call maybe their past 10 clients and just check in how are you doing? How have you been? How was working with our company? What challenges are you facing right now? What are you seeing in the industry? Like, just give a damn, just call people and showcase some interest in how they're actually doing.
Speaker 1:If you talk to 10 people who've paid you money before, you're going to start to see a pattern of what is going on and where there might be a gap that you could help them. What going on in the marketplace, for instance? I have noticed that revenue is down across the board in a lot of industries. Does that mean I'm going to discount my prices? No, but it might mean that I need to create a lower tier of service because people are not in their. They're strong in revenue right now. Right, or it might mean that I need to market in a different place where people are not price sensitive or not having a revenue dip. You see what I mean? Like I'm going to have to adapt because of what I see in the marketplace. Well, I know that because I talk to my people all the time. I find that a lot of people try to create marketing in a silo. So they haven't talked to anybody, but they've already made up in their mind what they're going to do or not do, and that's so strange to me.
Speaker 2:It's crazy actually that people do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because then you're kind of guessing. You're like, well, maybe this is going to work and maybe it's not going to work. I'm like, well, wouldn't it be better to just ask?
Speaker 2:Do you think people are afraid to talk to their own clients, or do you think?
Speaker 1:asking means that they are like, not smart or what. I think they're terrified of it, because a lot of times the client delivery is not as smooth as people had hoped. They actually don't want feedback from their clients and if you've got a mindset, you know block, that's telling you that people don't want to pay you, they don't have any money. You don't want to bother them. So I think there's lots of reasons why people don't go out and do the market research. I think they're afraid of what they're going to find, and I've always felt that way, because nothing else makes sense, right, but me. I'm gonna say this person chose me in the sea of of potential service providers and they paid me. So if they chose me and they paid me, they trust me. So why would I be afraid to talk to them?
Speaker 2:I know it's crazy. You know I did that. I went back to all my past clients. I'm like, hey, I'm I'm just curious, why did you hire me? And then I actually did that. I was very curious. I was like, okay, I wonder why someone would pay me. And yeah, it was quite interesting to see the responses. So it's such a good one to ask people what about your future clients? You know you were saying that, okay, you need to talk to people in your industry. You need to know what type of problems you're going to be solving. That should be your number one, right? So let's move on to now. I know who my target is, the problems that I'm solving. Then what do I do? How do I get this cold prospecting going?
Speaker 1:I don't do a ton of like absolutely cold. I'm more likely to reach out to people that I'm connected with on the fringe on social media, because those people are already warm to my content. Now, if you're not posting any content at all, then, yeah, those people are going to be cold, and if you're doing outright cold outreach, you're going to have to send hundreds of messages a month. That's why I don't do a lot of it. I would rather have people kind of warm themselves up to my content. I see my content like a bonfire. It's like a really warm, safe space on the internet that people kind of want to crowd around and then I just kind of tell stories by the bonfire. So that's my strategy, because I just feel like it's a lot easier for me to be out there putting out some goodwill. You know we all get those messages on LinkedIn from people who don't know us at all, giving us those fake ass compliments and telling us how much fun they're having by DMing us. And, yes, you will close some people with cold. But I think most people go about cold outreach the wrong way and they have no idea the volume it takes to make it work Like you are going to have to message or email hundreds of people to get one. Yes, so like if you don't have the number or the volume of people, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:So I think it's good for you to have kind of a multi-prong approach. You should be talking to the people you're in proximity to, talking to people who have paid you, before doing market research or coffee chats or connection calls with your peers, because that means that you aren't building relationship currency, and that's what sales is really. Sales is really about relationships and most people don't view it that way and they don't treat it that way and that's why they struggle. People want to pay me because they have a relationship with me, even if they've never met me in person. They feel like they have a relationship with me because of how often I show up for my community. But if you don't talk to people, you don't go to events, you don't pick up the phone, you don't do market research, how do you expect people to just wake up one day and pay you money? You know like it's not. It's not real, it's not realistic to expect.
Speaker 1:So I would always ask somebody who is like I need to go out and get some leads. What do you recommend. How many relationships are you building every single day? Because if you're not, that's the goal. The goal would be how do I get in community with people and how do I start building relationships with people so that they want to help me?
Speaker 1:If I went online today and said, look, I need some leads, I need to close the sale. I need one or two of this kind of person. Can you refer them to me? My DMs and my emails will be overrun because I've built so many relationships. People would be happy to help me. I find that when people say I have really no leads, what they really mean is I have no relationship with humans who would be willing to help me. So that's the problem I would fix. It's not really just who can pay me and why it's. Why should they care enough? Because if you're a personal brand, how much people like you and how much people know about you is directly correlated to how much money you're going to make.
Speaker 2:How do we get the consistency aspect of it? Because you said you know, if you just posted yes tomorrow and you wanted more leads, then you would immediately get DMs people wanting to refer or like, help you right. So how do we get to that point of having like a tab that we can open anytime and leads would come in and flow in?
Speaker 1:I think you just mentioned it it's consistency. You know, I think people tend to do things they like to do when they feel like doing them, and that's not consistency. So, just making some commitments to yourself and putting them on the calendar and actually doing them Every single day. I have three different blocks of revenue generating activity. I have a block for content, I have a block for prospecting and I have a time block for building relationships. On a good week, I do two coffee chats. If I'm really busy, I only do one week I do two coffee chats. If I'm really busy, I only do one. So every single month I'm spending six to eight hours in direct contact with people to tell them about what I do. Every single month.
Speaker 1:I was on 42 podcasts last year. That's what two, three, four a month Like. I actively seek out podcasts to be on. I've been in an anthology, you know. I have my own podcast. I have a YouTube channel that I'm creating. So I don't just do things what I feel like doing them.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where the issue is. People go. I'm not good at marketing, so I'm not going to do it. I'm not good at sales, so I'm not going to do it. I don't know how to message, so I'm not going to do it and I'm just going to try to push the onus of making money off onto other people. I'm going to get a referral engine. I'm going to run ads are going to fix my problem.
Speaker 1:People always think ads are going to solve something. Ads are just a paid version of the free stuff you're already doing on the internet. So if you're not doing any free stuff on the internet or if your free stuff is not converting, why would you pay money? Imagine doing something for free that didn't work and then deciding I'm going to spend some money to do it now. That doesn't make sense. So I think just getting consistent and being honest with yourself and saying you know what self. I'm going to spend an hour a week talking to real people. I'm gonna go online. I'm gonna go on my email list. I'm gonna find some people who can help me, because chances are you've got a past client or a current client or someone who wants to be a client who's already in your funnel.
Speaker 1:A lot of people already have a quiz. When's the last time you went through the quiz results and personally emailed or called or sent a text message to a person who took your quiz. When is the last time you went in your email analytics to see how many people clicked the button and went back and emailed every single person who clicked and went hey, I saw where you were interested in such and such. How can we get you started with that? Like it's, people have leads. I've never met a person who genuinely did not have one lead. I've never met that service provider.
Speaker 1:If you've been in business for years and years and my clients have they're not brand new. If you've been in business for years and years, you have leads. Most people just aren't taking the time to work their leads because, again, they're used to business just falling in their lap. And now that it's not and they're going to have to actually do some work to be consistent in client acquisition, they're failing because they don't have a client acquisition system in their business. And that is the most important system that your business can have. There is no system more important than client acquisition. Without it, you don't stay in business. So people will spend all of their time and energy trying to build out client delivery and operations and legal and financial, and that's great. But without clients, all of that stuff is irrelevant. You always have to have a client acquisition engine and most people just haven't put any gasoline in their engine in a really long time yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2:Uh, what do you say about clients that are? Are your clients that are quote-unquote busy because you said you know lawyers, accountants, like, let's talk about an accountant, you know they have their own fulfillment that you need, they need to do, and they say well, natalie, I don't have time to chat with people in the dms, like I don't have time to be coffee chatting, I don't have time to book podcasts. Like, can you help me? What do I do?
Speaker 1:you know what? My good friend sarah moon made a post about this, and I agree a lot of people to. I'm too busy myself out of business. Here's the truth. Okay, here's the gospel truth.
Speaker 2:I'm ready.
Speaker 1:It's the truth. Self-care in your business looks like never running out of money. So if you are the CEO, you have to put your mask on first. You have to make sure that your business stays afloat. So if you spend all of your time in client delivery to the degree that you can't market, something is wrong. Something is wrong in your process, something is wrong in your system, something is wrong in your pricing, because that's not normal. You should not be in a space where 100 percent of your time is being spent working in the business to where you can't spend any time working on the business. And it's common and normally it's one of three things. It's either lack of delegation, so you'll meet people who don't delegate.
Speaker 1:Luckily, accountants don't run into this, but creatives do, people who do branding, people who do websites, people who write copy. They typically are a one person show, so they only have so much bandwidth and so many hours in the day and as a person who writes lots of words, it can be hard to conjure up words on the spot all the time. So one is they're not delegating. That's why they're swamped. Two, they don't charge enough. So if your prices are too low, then you have to do too much delivery to make the money. So if you're charging $2,000, but you should be charging $5,000, you have to serve two and a half more clients than you should be right. So that runs into problems because that creates more delivery.
Speaker 1:Three they might be arrogant. A lot of people think they're too good to market. They think they shouldn't have to. They think it's a low brow skill. I'm so great. You look at me. Everyone knows how amazing I am. Look at my rewards, look at my degrees. People will find me. So it's usually one of those three things. It's either they're lacking the process and the team to be able to delegate some of that work, or they're charging so little that they're having to take on so many clients that they're stuck doing all the work. Or, three they just think they're too good to market. Either way, when you run into folks like this, they're going to go out of business. People who don't market their businesses go out of business. So either you or someone on your team or paid ads are going to have to be pulling people into the funnel.
Speaker 1:Cannot skip client acquisition. It's not an optional function in a business, it's a mandatory function. You have to focus on lead gen, which could be through your content marketing or through your SEO, or through social media or through email. You've got to nurture these leads because only 3% of your audience is ready to buy at any given time. So you close those 3%, but you're going to need to either retarget with ads or have an email sequence or have some personalized content to nurture these leads. And then you're going to have to pull people into a conversion either a sales call or a webinar, or a sales page or a landing page. You're going to have to do something that pulls people in. You can't just focus on client onboarding and client delivery unless you've got a service that people never, ever, ever cancel. And I don't know that I've ever met a person like that that sells something that humans need indefinitely and there's never any churn. They don't need any new clients ever. I've never met a person like that.
Speaker 2:I love that, you know. I especially love the you are too arrogant type of type of one.
Speaker 1:They don't know it, they don't recognize it. But anybody who's listening to this thinking I don't have time for that, I'm not going to do that. I'm not a marketer. I didn't go in business to market. I didn't go in business to sale. You're arrogant. You absolutely did go in business to sell. If you didn't want to sell, you should have stayed an employee. That's the only way that you can just show up and do the thing. If you just want to show up and do the service, that is what an employee is.
Speaker 1:But you cannot expect, as a person growing a startup to one, two, three, five million dollars, that you are going to be able to consistently close business without even trying just because you look good or just because you're superior at the work that you do. I'm a very attractive person. Ain't nobody thinking about how hot I am and that's why I don't have to market? That's crazy. I'm really good at what I do. But if nobody knows that I'm good at what I do because I don't open my mouth and tell anybody, I'm going to go out of business. Marketing is self-care for your business. So when people tell me they don't market and they don't sell, I know that they really deeply do not care about their business. They can't, and they're probably neglecting some of their own needs on the personal side as well.
Speaker 1:Right Like that normally permeates from other things, like maybe their money mindset or childhood trauma. There's usually a reason why people don't want to put themselves out there. They're like, well, I don't want to be in the spotlight, then why'd you start a business? Exactly, how are you going to be behind the scenes in your own If you're behind the scenes? Who's in front of the scene? Who's in the scene If you're behind the scenes?
Speaker 1:This is the kind of stuff that people tell me in the DMs I don't really want to be popular, but yet you're a personal brand. I don't. I don't have advice for some of this stuff, man. Some of this stuff just makes me scratch my head and I'm like I get it. I this stuff, man. Some of this stuff just makes me scratch my head and I'm like I get it. I'm not saying I want to be popular, but at the point that I have a personal brand, I have to put myself out there. Now you can decide that that doesn't work and create a different type of business. I know lawyers who their face is not on their website at all. But if you've built a personal brand, you've got to be the face of the brand.
Speaker 2:you can't hide in a personal brand I know it's insane that you say that some people are just I don't want to show my face or I don't want to show up for my business. That's insane to me. Anyway, I wanted to add here something that I personally been observing on the arrogance level. More it's it's more like hey, I don't want to lower myself to like dm people or like you know, because my value, I'm an authority and when I'm dming them they're gonna think that I'm some low-ass cheap you know, whatever person that you know somehow that's so weird because when we think about your client acquisition engine, that starts with lead gen and then lead nurturing it moves into the conversion.
Speaker 1:So how are you going to convert people? Part of that conversion is the sales process. What difference does it make if the sales process is a phone call, a Zoom call, an email or a DM? Right Like, why does it matter where the sales conversation happens? That's what's always so interesting to me. If you're a consultant and you have a lead and they took your quiz but they didn't take action, they didn't book a call, they didn't do whatever your quiz told them to do, what does it harm you to pick up the phone or to send them a DM? Why are those? I'll never get that. I'll never get. What's supposed to be so fancy and sophisticated about email? Why is email great and DMs are scammy? It's just a different medium. We used to send telegrams and then we and wigwams.
Speaker 1:We have to have all this stuff. So what does it matter? That technology has moved to where you can get closer to your client, I don't care if you're sending them text messages. You need to be doing something to connect to these clients. The truth is, you're not doing people a service by allowing them to keep their money and keep their problem. That's what a lot of people have. They have a money mindset issue. They think you know what. I don't want to take money from people. I just want to help people. I just want to teach. You're going to teach your way right out of business and, like I said, my ideal client is not afraid of sales, but a lot of people are terrified of the sales process, and so that's why they will tell you that DMs are scammy. They think everything is scammy that has direct content. They don't want to make direct content. They want to hide. They want to get on a sales call.
Speaker 1:I'm in a Facebook group with financial planners, because I used to be one, and there was a guy in there. He does this free webinar. He gets tons of people to show up and then he gives them a 30 minute call to review their investments. At the end of the call. He doesn't make them an offer. He instead waits three days and then three days he sends them an email and the email has references, and the references were other clients of his that are willing to talk to prospects.
Speaker 1:So I'm like, let me get this straight. You got people to come to a webinar where they were interested in hearing you speak. You got them to listen for 90 minutes and book a call. At the end, when they booked the call, they gave you information about their financial situation so that you could make an assessment. You show up and they show up to the call. You give them the insight, you tell them you can help them. Instead of making an offer, you let them go. You wait three days and then you give them information about your clients who are already paying you and you make your clients who are already paying. You get on the phone with the prospect that you were afraid to sell so that they can sell them on how good it is working with you this is insane.
Speaker 2:This is an existing example.
Speaker 1:This is a real example wait fuck, you know, really have this a real thing, in a real group, with a real living, breathing person. He thinks he's doing people a favor by giving them time to think about it and and, but what he's really doing is abdicating his responsibility as a business owner and pushing it off on his clients, saying here, clients, you sell my prospects on how great it is to work with me, because I can't be bothered it's all mine it is.
Speaker 2:Is it like a? I'm afraid of money, I don't want money, or what the hell is this like, is it?
Speaker 1:I think people have deep-rooted money stories.
Speaker 1:a lot of people view money as safety and so they feel like when they ask people for money, they are taking their safety away. Some people really don't think about money or sales at all. They really just love their craft and they're just in it to do the job and they should probably remove themselves from the sales process and and hire a salesperson. If this guy is getting those kind of numbers, if he's getting that many people to show up to his workshop or masterclass and people are booking a sales call, he shouldn't be the one running the sales call. That's the truth. He should probably hire a commission only salesperson and let that person do the sales part of his content. That's an option, you know. Like everyone's just not going to be money driven, everyone's not going to ask for the sale, and I could tell by the way that he wrote this post that he wasn't going to change like.
Speaker 2:he could just hire somebody, and that's probably what I would recommend for him maybe you should dm him and like get him on a vip day or something yeah, but a person like that that's afraid to ask for the sale probably isn't going to pay me to teach them to sell.
Speaker 1:Like a person who's trying to crowdsource free advice in a group of financial planners probably isn't going to hire a sales coach do you think that's a curable problem, like if you see more like creative people that are afraid to ask for the sale?
Speaker 2:what would you say like step one, step two, step three, step four get out of your head like what would your recommendation be for these people?
Speaker 1:I mean, like I have a course it's actually called ask for the sale, but I think before that people have to be certain in their mindset. So one people need to assess is this a trauma response? Like, do I have a a deep-rooted feeling about money? When I ask people for money, what do I feel in my body? Because they might need to speak to a therapist or a money coach or a financial therapist, somebody who works around financial trauma. First, that might be their first step. Second, if it's a skill issue, then they just need to learn the skill right and you can literally set up a sales call roadmap where you do this and then you do this and then you do this.
Speaker 1:I told the guy in the group for free. I was like, hey, at the end of this call you just need to extend an offer right then. Now that we've looked through your financial situation and I've assessed A, b and C, I'm certain that I could help you as a financial planner. I do this for this kind of person and it costs this much. Are you interested in signing up? Like it doesn't have to be elaborate, but I got the idea that there was a mental block there. It had nothing to do with skill. It was a will issue and until he works through what he's actually afraid of, there's no amount of coaching that's going to solve that. People think I'm just going to hire a coach and I'm going to turn into a whole new being. That's going to solve that. People think I'm just going to hire a coach and I'm going to turn into a whole new being.
Speaker 2:And that's rarely what happens. I love it. I may not have ever been taught Like?
Speaker 1:I find that that's kind of an interesting thing, too, that a lot of people don't. They've never had any kind of. They were working for a firm, they quit their job and then they started their own business and they were getting referrals from wherever they used to work or whatever they used to do with their social circles, and so now that they're in business for themselves, some people just really have no idea, like no one has ever sat down and taught them. This is how you get clients, and I've met people who made millions of dollars High of COVID 2020, 2021, everybody was making money. The difference is, I knew in 2020 and 2021 that it was atypical. I knew that. But I'm finding that a lot of people who were in business in 2020 and 2021 didn't realize they were in a coaching bubble. They didn't realize that sales were higher than normal. They didn't realize that this money was not going to happen forever, that this was an anomaly and that things were going to shift back to normal. I knew then, so I maximized in previous years, but I never got to a point where I thought I'm going to be able to stop doing client acquisition. I'm just going to stop doing that. I never thought that, and I'm learning that a lot of people thought that what happened in 2020 and 2021 was normal. That was the. This is how it's always going to be.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to put an offer out there and someone's going to buy it. I'm just going to put an offer out there and someone's going to buy it. I'm just going to sell what I want and someone's going to do it. I'm going to ask for referrals and someone's going to have one. I'm going to ask them to pay in full and they're going to be able to. And now they've settled into a normal and are like shit.
Speaker 1:It's actually really tough to sell stuff out here. I guess I need a client acquisition formula, I guess I need this, I guess I need that. And it's hard to try to create that when you're years in and you've never had to do that skill before. And I think that's where a lot of people are right now, and it's embarrassing. You can't really admit to people that your revenue is down, especially online, because a lot of the reason why people are hiring is because they're like oh, look at this person's success, look at this person's success. So you don't want to admit that you're broke, so then you have to go out and pretend like what you're doing is still working. It's tough out here let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:Um, do you see that often, by the way that broke, people saw themselves as making, you know, good money and saying well I'm just having my 50k months and then behind the scenes they're crumbling because I, to be honest with you and I'm not gonna say names, I have a lot of entrepreneur friends that are like I'm doing so well and behind the scenes I'm hey, I'm going going homeless, like basically, that's the contrast between some of the people online and what we, what they share, versus the reality.
Speaker 1:I think, think a lot of people lie, but I know why they do it. I get why they do it because we have made a really a really weird online. You really have to be successful for people to hire you. So if you come out and admit that you're not financially successful right now, people will make judgments about you and not hire you, even if what you do has nothing to do with money. You could be a sex coach. You could be a realtor nothing to do with money. You really don't a sex coach. You could be a realtor Nothing to do with money. You really don't want to come out and say you know, hey, we're struggling right now because people might make the assumption that you're bad at running your business, you're bad at what you do, you're irresponsible with money. You know you're in financial duress and I will admit the few times in my life where I have hired somebody who admitted that they were struggling, they came out and made a post hey, I'm struggling right now. We could lose our house. We could do this, we could do that. I'm looking for some project work. This is the kind of work I can do. I've hired that kind of person three times and all three times I waited months to get my work if I ever got it. I've actually never had a good experience with a person who was crying broke on the internet, because they're usually doing so bad that they can't even focus on the work anymore because of how things have gotten. Um. So I do think people lie.
Speaker 1:I also think people lie inadvertently because they don't know their numbers. So, like I have a financial advisor, I have a bookkeeper, I have a CFO who's also my CPA. Every single month she sends me financial documents. I'm actually meeting with her in an hour and 12 minutes and we're going to talk through the money that got spent in the business, the money that got made in the business. We're going to talk about the profit in the business, the cash reserves of the business, the balance sheet of the business, whether things are trending up or whether they're trending down, what adjustments need to be made, whether I need to cut payroll, whether I can afford to give myself a raise, whether I can afford to hire some help. We meet every single month and we talk about every line item, line by line by line in QuickBooks. We talk for 60 to 90 minutes and we're always in communication.
Speaker 1:Very few entrepreneurs have that I would say less than like 5%. Like I am atypical in that category. Most people really don't know what they're making. They know if the money in their bank account is going down, they know that, but they really can't tell you if they're above their forecast or below their forecast. Or they really don't know or below their forecast or they really don't know. And so that's what I find is that there's a placeholder, for here's the way that people perceive that I'm doing, and most people try to stay in that placeholder. They do not want to admit that they're not doing as well as public perception or they're just they're. They're lying to themselves. They know things aren't great, but by not putting it on paper and by not having conversations, no one has to know that things aren't going great. But I get the truth because I get people's PNLs.
Speaker 1:If you're a private client of mine, I want your profit and loss statement, because I know that people will lie about money, and I need to know how much money you're actually making so I can give you the right recommendation. Because if you're making $80,000 a month, you've got resources to be able to hire team and staff, so I can give you entirely different advice than if you're making $10,000 a month. Because at $10,000 a month, because at $10,000 a month you can only afford to pay yourself and maybe a VA. That's it. By the time you set aside profit, pay taxes, pay me, you're wiped. There's nothing left. So I got to give you different advice at $10,000 a month than somebody who's making $80,000 a month and has some team.
Speaker 1:That person might be able to cut expenses. A person making $10,000 a month probably doesn't have any expense that they can actually cut. They've got to make more money. They might be able to raise their prices and make more money, but maybe the market they sell to has run out of money, and I get that a lot. A lot of people are struggling because the people they sell to don't have the money. So they're doing okay, but their prospects are feeling the pinch. Well, if your prospects are feeling the pinch, what happens to you there?
Speaker 2:you go.
Speaker 1:It trickles down. So this is why I tell people you've got to make sure. The number one rule in marketing is to market to people with the money to buy your shit. It's the number one and it's the one that people ignore over and over and over and over again. They sell to people who cannot afford their stuff and they let some woo energetic coach tell them. That's not true. Anyone can afford anything. If your messaging was better, let me tell you right now I'm the queen of messaging.
Speaker 1:There is no messaging that's going to get a person with no resources to pay you. That is atypical. That is a very rare occurrence that you're going to be able to finesse a person who is legitimately struggling to pay you money Now somebody like me. I might say I'm on a spending fast. That just means I don't want to pay you. That doesn't mean I can't pay you. There's a difference. But if a person does not have the money like, say, you're talking to someone who's making $5,000 a month they're paying themselves $4,000 and they're barely scraping by. They have no access to credit, their personal credit score is poor, their revenue is too low for them to qualify for a Stripe loan or a PayPal loan or a Square loan and they have $312 in their business bank account right now. There are no words that's going to sell them into a $30,000 mastermind. Those words don't exist. Stop looking for them.
Speaker 1:A better question is why do you want to sell a $30,000 package to somebody with $312 in their bank account? That's a better question and that's what pisses me off. A lot of people spend all of their energy marketing to folks who don't have the money, and pricing is supposed to screen people out, but it's also supposed to signal the value. You shouldn't want a person who's not financially qualified in your program. If your program is priced correctly If it's $30,000, it should be because it creates massive ROI, and a person who gets massive ROI is a person who can implement what you teach them in the $30,000 mastermind.
Speaker 1:A person with $312 is not resourced enough to be able to do what you recommend in the mastermind, so why would you want them in it? So that's where I get really frustrated with people in their sales stuff, and this is why I won't say the industry has collapsed, but this is why a lot of coaches have gone out of business, because for years and years they were selling high ticket stuff to very beginner, to early clients who were flush with cash temporarily and now those people have run out of business and now they have no one to sell those programs to you know, natalie, I need you to.
Speaker 2:You know, um, I don't know. I see you have like a paid podcast that you do, but you need and I need some Natalie like daily talk sense to people type of thing, because I'm like, I'm so clear.
Speaker 1:It is Monday through Friday. Kicking the ass audio, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you this is amazing. Like I, it's just I can't. Like you need I mean you need to do this more often. Like you just talk sense to people, because not only okay, you have a very great understanding in finances because of your financial background, you're not afraid to look at it. You're not afraid, you're not hiding from it Like a lot of people are in business, they don't want to look at it. You are like very like, grounded in yourself and in your understanding of finances businesses like you know why they lie about money.
Speaker 2:You know all of that. So that's amazing. And on top of that, you just like your riffs are like talking sense to people, so I think please keep doing them, if you're doing them on your podcast anyway. So I know you have to go because you have your bookkeeping meeting in five minutes, so can you tell us how people can find you? And, yeah, do you have any anything that they need to check out aside from your amazing podcast?
Speaker 1:you should listen to the podcast. Um, you can check me out at unapologeticwealthcom or on instagram. My handle is at unapologetic wealth. The one thing I want to leave you with is that, as an entrepreneur, you can make as much money as you choose to, and I want you to let that sink in and like permeate, like, rub it in like lotion.
Speaker 1:I want you to like hug it and feel really comfortable with that, because it doesn't matter how much money you have now. You have the ability to go out and generate that revenue. Don't let your past what you did last month, what you did last year, what you did last quarter keep you from moving forward into what you need to do in the future. 80% of the businesses that go out of business run out of cash. That is the killer of businesses. It's running out of capital. So do whatever you need to do to not run out of capital in your business. Once you run out of money, it's game over.
Speaker 1:So be more concerned about staying in business than you are about seeming pushy or seeming salesy or asking people for help or asking people to pay you. Be more concerned about how embarrassed you're going to be If you have to go back to a job that you hate or admit to your partner that you've lost your life savings and they're going to have to bail you out. That that's what scares me. I'm terrified of having to tell my husband that we're not going to be able to pay the mortgage this month because my business is struggling, and I'm way more afraid of that than how people perceive me on the Internet. I don't give a damn how salesy people think I am. I'd rather be salesy than broke, amen sales even broke.
Speaker 2:Amen loved it. Thank you so much, natalie, for for being here. I'll just make sure to link all your socials in the description of this episode. What a fire episode. I'm so so here for you. Thank you so much yay.