Reminder of What It Means to Sell with Heart
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Episode Summary:
Hi, hi friends. Today I’m sharing some personal news that I have been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma and while the prognosis is very positive, I’m taking this as a sign to take a break this summer from the podcast. So what’s this episode about? I’m going to share how we can continue to work together the next couple of months, and remind you what it can look like to really sell with heart. If you’re in the messy middle of your business, this episode is going to be so helpful for you. After listening you’ll know exactly how to be your best advocate and how to make selling really worth your time. You have to sell in your business, but it doesn’t have to be everything, so shifting your mindset will be really useful.
Topics Discussed:
A personal update from Anna and what it means for you as a member of her community and the podcast
The importance of taking stock of all of the things that you have created, then creating fresh new dreams and goals
The different ways you can work with Anna throughout the summer
How selling can reveal areas of your life that you need to give more care to
Why a dedicated 1:1 coach or a mastermind with a hands on coach is the key to the messy middle of business
Episode Resources:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Stitcher
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Anna (00:02.382)
Hi, sweet friends. I am coming to today with some interesting news, some mixed news. I, of course, am batching this ahead, but when you will be listening to this podcast, I will have finished my surgery for basal cell carcinoma skin cancer. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with that, but the good news is that there's a 99 % cure rate for this type of skin cancer. And while there will be a bit of recovery to my face,
the prognosis looks really good. And so I just wanted to share that with you because you guys are my friends, my community. and I also wanted to share with you because of that, I'm using this as an excuse to take a summer break. I have run this podcast for over 225 episodes now without a single pause. And I, as I was thinking about batching and prepping for my time away, I really felt the call.
to write. Like, of course I love the podcast, but I am such a writer at heart. I write poetry in my journal for my own therapy, right? I love to write stories. I love to create trainings. And so I'll share with you more a little bit how we can stay in touch during the summer break as I write some fresh emails for you. But I just wanted to share what this means for you, what this means for us, and just keep you updated mostly.
This comes at really interesting timing because I was meeting with my therapist and just processing the skin cancer thing and just several things in my life. She is such, do you have anyone in your life that like even just sitting with them feels good? I swear she could say nothing and I would feel happy and healed. So next time you're with a client and you feel pressure to like be a dancing monkey, like just remember for your clients,
Even just your presence is probably so healing to them. Anyway, so we were talking and sharing and I was sharing that, you know, it was one year ago that I bought the house and, you know, she just really asked me like, what's it like Anna to have realized a big dream like that, right? To have, you know, gone from an unhealthy situation for you and your kids to moving across the country to saving $200 ,000 cash as a single mom.
Anna (02:21.678)
and being able to buy a house for your kids. And I just, of course, balled because like I share, like so often we're pursuing the next dream or chasing the next thing and we forget to be like, wow, I'm a bad -ass. Wow. I'm really proud of myself. Wow. I, you know, before I feel like I'm in a season of getting ready to dream a fresh dream. And I'm really excited about that. It's so interesting because you guys might know I do like vision boards pretty frequently and
Two years ago, my vision board was very jam packed with like specific words. Like it's almost all letters and a lot of like written goals and specific dreams. And then as I was moving into the house, my vision board had almost no words on it. And I actually had some girls over to my house to do the vision boarding and I kind of felt almost embarrassed. I'm like, this is kind of a sad excuse for a vision board because it was just.
a lot of pretty colors and soft images and flowers. And I just was like, okay, that's what it is. I don't even know what this means, but I'm just going to let it be. And what I realized is this last year was just this year of acclimating to a new house and a new, you know, you know, having climbed the mountain, climbed the mountain. Like this last year was really me standing on the rooftop and being like, wow, this feels
And I just feel like this year I've sunk into routine and rhythm so much that when I travel, I crave home. I crave my girlfriends. I crave my yoga classes. I crave that beautiful daily happy -born dream life, right? And so, you know, I'm so grateful for this last year, but I think with my therapist, I was realizing like, I'm ready for a fresh dream. I'm ready for a fresh goal. And this time,
I really wanted to be for me, not that the house wasn't for me, but honestly, the last five years really were me kind of in survival -ish mode, you know, providing a house and stability for my kids. It really was for them. And I really want to have the next dream be for me because I think, you know, just to be honest, as I was thinking about it, I was like, not that I felt like bitter or resentful. I'm like, yeah, I got the house, but like that wasn't even really for me, you know? And so I just think like moving forward, I really want to be intentional as I'm dreaming the summer.
Anna (04:42.606)
I teach my clients this beautiful process called a dream dump, a desire dump. I can share the workbook with you. But what I really want to do is give myself permission to ask myself some of the bigger life questions. I think obviously something as serious as cancer has me asking some of the deeper life questions too. Like, what do I want to do with my time here left on earth? My dad had a really serious health scare last year. And I think it's just those same questions of like, what are we doing? What do I want to accomplish? How can I continue to drop my ego?
and just continue to go after what matters most to me. And that's something I've really always done, but I'm just more committed to it than ever. So I'm really excited for the summer pause. I'm really excited to dive back into my writing. I'm really excited to, you know, clear my commitments a little bit more. When I took a six month leave from my business, when I went on maternity leave early on, I did a ton of like batching and prepping my content. And something I wish I did was not batch so much content.
I batch six months of content. I was really early in my business, so I didn't really know what to expect. And I think that was my way of establishing some sort of control. And now I realize, I probably just needed to batch one month of content. So I'm going to be doing that. I'm going to be batching some summer emails. I'm going to be batching some reels, of course. But other than that, just embracing that life is uncertain. We never know what's around the corner. And how do we write that fine edge between preparing, but also just embracing?
the seasons that come. I'm super excited that one of my best friends is gonna come stay with me when I'm recovering from my surgery. And I'm just looking forward to just a little extra spaciousness this summer. I'm really grateful for it, obviously, even though it's something very challenging. Okay, so a few things. Number one, I wanna share with you how you can work with me if you are interested in that, if you are happening upon the podcast and we're in a little bit of pause. And I also wanna share with you,
about my final words I want to be like about selling with heart. Okay. You know, that's the name of my mastermind, but I just realized that my beautiful podcast manager, like it's gave me the idea of like, what does that even mean to you? So I just want to share with that a little bit more, but I want to invite you. I am only taking a five day pause from client work. Okay. I am taking a, you know, break a summer break from the podcast, but client work. I'm just only taking really a five day pause because for me,
Anna (07:07.47)
Client e -communication, client sessions are the last thing I'll cut in my business because I just love my clients and I love that work. It fuels me. So if you are looking for support, I will be supporting clients all summer long. Two ways. If you are looking to sign your first five coaching or consulting clients specifically in any niche, health coaching, live coaching, I have a 12 week live program where I am there supporting you, reviewing your worksheets personally, all of that.
and it is designed to help you sign your next five coaching clients, consulting clients. Super affordable, super beautiful little community, and it just really is me supporting you live in there. And because of how the calls timing turned out, our normal Zoom sessions will be just as normal too. So I will post the link to that. The other thing is I do a mastermind two times a year.
open doors for that. When I'm listening, when this is going live, I think it still might be open. And so I do for women that are already making $2 ,000 in their business, looking to make six figures or multi six figures along a really small group of heart centered sisters and a coach that's super involved in your journey that knows you, that knows the context of your business and is there to personally coach you. Those really are my personal clients.
Feel free to reach out if you are interested in those. I also in a few months may have a one -on -one space opening up. And so just let me know if you want to sign up for a discovery call and I'm happy to do that. Okay, let's talk about selling with heart. Selling, selling, selling is just something that I feel like forever has changed my life. Isn't it so interesting that the things that we work on in our business, like getting visible, like selling, like narrowing our message.
it really uncovers usually a challenge we have in other areas of life, right? Like if we're having a challenge, like narrowing down a niche or message, often it can align with in our life, feeling conflicted around our life purpose, right? Or feeling like, I don't wanna choose. I don't wanna leave people out, right? If we are feeling nervous about visibility in our business, it might align with.
Anna (09:20.91)
having fears around being seen or being heard or disrupting the waters in your personal life. I know for me, at the start of my business as I was getting visible, it really was a fear around, what will people think of me? Will people judge me as a private therapist? I was just nervous about that line of where is over sharing? All of that. Same thing with selling.
Selling is you standing firm in who you are, what you have to offer and putting yourself out there, having an opinion, stepping into thought leadership, being an active participant, being willing to go first, being willing to invite others, being willing to take a stand, being willing to face rejection, right? That's selling. And this is why I'm obsessed with helping women sell because what I find is on the other side of...
loving selling, loving inviting people to their work is they are more confident, empowered, badass women. Not only that, but also remember selling is the portal to money, right? Whether you are selling yourself and you are in a job interview, whether you are selling yourself in your business, it really is you being able to be your own best self advocate. And that's what I want to talk about today. Okay, what does it look like to be your own best case study for your work?
What does it look like to be your own best advocate for the work you provide? How can you get sold on that? And what came up for a lot of clients is how confident are you in what you offer and what you sell? This is why I love my program, Getting Coached, so much because I actually teach coaching skills. So if you are feeling shaky or unconfident in your skills or what you are selling as a coach, go work on them, right?
Go take a course, go read a book, work on your coaching skills, right? If you are an accountant and you're feeling unconfident in something like go to a conference, like I just think we get stuck in imposter syndrome too long and either A, get over it or B, educate yourself and equip yourself, right? Not trying to be heartless there, but really think through like, what is standing in the way of me being my best saleswoman?
Anna (11:34.03)
Right? We all have that like friend in our life where we're like, my gosh, she's amazing. She's so inspires me. I love like we sell her. Right? Or we all have that thing that we love, like a movie series, or you guys know for me, I love these little stick on nails from Target called impressed nails. They've like changed my nails game. I'm not even like a big girly person, but two years ago I discovered these and you can press them on your nails. They don't require nail glue, rays, and they come off with hot water in the shower.
For me, I love gel polish on my toes, but when I get gel polish at the salon, it starts to chip a little bit because I'm super active and rough with my hands. And then I feel like I have to go back to the salon to take it. It just feels like a debacle. And for me, I'm an access service person. And so for me, gel polish is like the opposite of access. It's like another project to get done, right? Anyway, so anyone I meet, I'm like, you've got to try these like $7 impressed nails from Target. I -P -R -E -S -S. They are my go -to. They take like,
now I'm really fast. So at first it probably took me 10 minutes. Now it takes like two minutes for me to put these on. If I'm going out salsa dancing sometimes I'll even bring them and like put them on in the restaurant before I go out. Right. But it's just like, when you believe in something, you're like, my gosh, how, how can you do that about your work? Right. Genuinely. So that when you're showing up in sales calls, so that when you're showing up at Instagram stories, you can be like, my gosh, like you have got to get a new brand.
for your business and it's got to be with me because I'm the best branding designer out there. There's no one that cares more about your brand than me. You are in safe hands when you invest in your branding with me. Like when's the last time you directly told your audience that and compellingly invited them to your work, right? And I think it's just remembering this is not forcing them anything. This is just giving them the choice and then they can say yes or no, right? And if they say no, you'll back up. Like you're not forcing them, right?
And I think so often we don't want to be icky, we don't want to be pushy. Maybe someone's done a sales tactic to you before, like, if you don't buy this, then you're a bad person or blah, blah, blah, right? Like that we swing the other way and we forget that it's okay to be compelling. It's okay to be persuasive. It's okay to be your best advocate there. Another point here is just to remember what you're selling, right? And to, for me, what really helps me is to really lock in on selling the power of what I do.
Anna (13:56.494)
And then as a side note, say hire me for it, right? So maybe, for example, let's say you sold Impress nails, right? You would sell them on, my gosh, these are the best nails in the industry, whether you get them from Target, whether you get them from CVS, whether you buy them from the Impress website online, but if you wanna buy them from me, you can, and this is how you do it, right? Blah, blah, blah. So for me, this looks like, like if I was selling my mastermind, I might say something like,
when you are in that messy middle season of business where you are starting to get traction and starting to get clients, but you don't yet have enough cashflow to really feel like you're getting compensated for all the work you're doing, you're in this like biz puberty, messy middle season of business, right? Where you're getting some success, but not so much success that you can really fully afford to outsource at all. You haven't quite figured out your team or your systems. It's messy, messy.
I would advocate there's no better combination than a one -on -one coach that's in your corner and mastermind sisters that are normalizing the experience so that you're not feeling alone. I really feel like in that season of between making 2K to 8K, 12K, being in a mastermind is it. A mastermind though, that you have a coach in your corner, someone that's gonna include one -on -one sessions, someone that's going to be there for you in Slack in the day to day.
I, when I was in that season of my business, I did three different masterminds. And honestly, two of them were a huge disappointment. One of them kind of promised support from the coach. There was not that support there, right? The other one, it was kind of the same thing where there was no direct support from the leader. And I really feel like that's good. But also I've done seasons where I haven't had that mastermind sisterhood. And I've really missed that. I've missed women.
that get it. I've missed hearing other people's problems to remind me that my problems aren't that big, that I'm going to be OK, that I'm not the only one. And so that's why I created Sell With Heart, to be that fusion of one -on -one support, but also intimate, tiny sisterhood. And so what I would say to you is if you're in that messy middle season of business, already making 2K, not yet making and taking home six figures, multi -six figures, join a mastermind, whether it's mine or another one,
Anna (16:17.422)
join a mastermind, but where you're gonna get a lot of coaching attention. If you want to get my mastermind for that, I really don't think there's a better one on the block, right? Okay, so that was me selling that to you. Did you catch that, right? I was like, I don't care whose mastermind you do, I just think you should do a mastermind if that's you. However, if you wanna hire me, awesome, right?
So this would go for like maybe you're a health coach and you really believe in the vegan lifestyle. Obviously there's so many ways to get healthy, right? People have different approaches. So you would sell, go vegan. I don't care if you hire me as your health coach, you're not. This is why you need to go vegan. This is why it's gonna change your life. And if you want my personal support on how to go vegan in a way that blah, blah, blah, hire me because I don't know anyone more passionate about veganism than me, okay?
So I think when we separate it in that way, and then another helpful form of separation is just remembering to separate for me who you are as the saleswoman and who you are as the service provider. I think we really get in our heads because we're like, I don't want to sell this to this person. And then what if they say yes and they can't afford it? Or what if they say yes and they don't get results? Just remembering your job, of course, is to be ethical and integrist, but just to show up and sell.
and answer any questions about your product, right? To really, if you feel like it's true, say like, I feel like this would really serve you. This would be a great fit for you. And then put on that hat later of, you know, a coach or whatever is like changing hats in that way. Okay. Hopefully this was helpful for you. And hopefully this is the beautiful little booty kick you need to ask yourself, number one, what do I need to do to be my best advocate when I sell my stuff this summer? Because then my stuff is gonna be more potent.
and then I will have to sell less, right? I'll be able to, for me, even though I feel like I actually don't sell that much in my business, but when I do sell, I'm potent, right? When I am selling and sending invite messages on Instagram or via email, I'm batching them. I'm sending like 15 of them and I'm really giving it my heart. I'm giving it my all, right? I think sometimes we think we have to like, you have to sell in your business in order to make six figures, multiply six figures.
Anna (18:34.222)
but it doesn't have to be everything, right? But I do think shifting your mindset here is gonna be useful. So asking yourself, are there any shifts I need to make to my work, to my business so that I can be the best advocate for it? Do I need to change anything? Maybe you're like, I'm not feeling excited to sell because I'm nervous to get fully booked and then be overwhelmed, right? Like maybe you need to hire a team member to help you handle the work or whatever it is, right?
Just give yourself that permission to ask yourself what's blocking you from leaning into more sales. Maybe equip yourself with sales tools or techniques or strategies. I definitely do that in the mastermind. The first half is sales strategy. The second half is money mindset. But I really encourage you to remind yourself it's safe to sell with heart. It's safe to invite people into my work. It's safe to work on the skill that's gonna help me manifest more money, right? We all had different phases of...
business and entrepreneurship that help us with different things, right? Cultivating your skill as a team leader is gonna help you create capacity and freedom, right? Cultivating your skill of sales is gonna help flood you with money and resources. So just remember that it's safe to master the skill, it's safe to invite, it's safe to be seen, it's safe to...
to like the little affirmations I gave you earlier, to stand up, to go first, to invite people to be brave, to be bold, not just in sales, but in your life, right? Life is short. So let's get it, go out there, let's sell and share from our heart. Sending you the biggest hug. And I will put in the show notes the link to join my email community. If you wanna stay in the loop this summer, I'm super excited for this email series, for my little love notes to you. And...
I will see you when we resume from break.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.