There comes a time in every entrepreneur's journey when the dreaming part of building a business collides with a slightly less dreamy reality. You actually have to sell something for it to be a business. And I think a lot of us purpose-driven entrepreneurs do everything we possibly can to avoid that moment, right? We make lots of content. We tweak our websites endlessly. We build new lead magnets. We take another course. We decide, "Ah, I need to get more followers before I actually start talking about this." And all of those things can be very useful. They are very useful, but then they can also become a sophisticated way of avoiding just saying, "Hey, I can help you with this. Would you like to work with me?" And so today we're talking about sales again. I promised you we were gonna go deep on sales this month, and we are, but this one's not about sales scripts or closing techniques. We're gonna talk today about the mindset shift that happens when you realize, "I said I wanted a business, and that means I have to be willing to sell on a regular basis." And I'm gonna tell you about three of my clients who have gone through this exact moment recently with three completely different businesses, three completely different goals, and what ultimately helped each of them feel the fear and then sell it anyways. So let's get into it. Hey there. Welcome to the Mindset to Market podcast, your go-to space for practical tools and solutions to the everyday challenges of being a creative and soulful entrepreneur living in a material world. I'm your host, Deborah Smith, a holistic business coach and marketing strategist with 17 years of experience. I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and learn daily marketing practices that balance personal wellness with financial growth and impact. I'm here to offer you support with creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect, messy action so you can experience daily breakthroughs as you grow. If you're a purpose-driven entrepreneur building an online business, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Mindset to Market podcast. I'm gonna keep this episode short today because I really have one thing that I want to say to you. I've been thinking so much about this as I get ready to teach the Solopreneur Sales System next week. I'm really putting a lot of thought into how can I best help people get over this hurdle. So we're gonna talk about offers and messaging and customer journeys and content, and all the actual pieces of building a sales system in that masterclass. But underneath all of those things is something so much simpler and yet so much more challenging, which is that you have to be willing to sell, right? You can have the most beautiful sales system in the whole world. The funnels and the landing pages and the sales pages and the messaging and the copy and the images and the photo shoot, it's all beautiful, it's ready to go, but at some point you have to make an invitation to people. You have to be willing to actually get a little bit vulnerable and risk something and ask for the sale. And I remember very clearly when that became real for me in my own business, right? When the dreamy part meets the bottom line. So there's this beautiful early stage of entrepreneurship where everything is just possibility, right? You're dreaming, you're creating, you're crafting new ideas. You're imagining all of the amazing things that you could do with this business, the impact that you can make, the different ways you could package up your offers, you know, the different ways that you could sell variations of your idea, the things that you can create, and wouldn't it be amazing if we did this? Oh my God, we could do that. And I love that stage. I am an ideas person. I'm a creative. I could happily live in that stage for a very, very long time But I remember a very specific point in building my first business when we had no choice but to shift out of that never-ending creative ideation phase and into, "Oh, okay, this business actually has to make some money right now." So if you have ever felt that feeling of like, "I need to make money right now," you, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of procrastinating or procrasticreating. So, you know, this is back in the day, we were bootstrapping. We did not have investors. We didn't have funders or backers who were gonna swoop in and inject a pile of money. If we wanted to make this work, we had to figure out a way to start earning, and there was a hard bottom line, right? And nothing lights a fire under your ass quite like realizing that the Department of Consumer Affairs fees are due if you would like to continue having a permit to actually have your business, right? So we had staffing costs, materials, food and ingredients, packaging, rentals, insurance, licenses, equipment. All of these expenses existed whether or not I felt particularly aligned with selling that week or willing to be vulnerable that week, right? And in some ways, I, I think that having a physical business makes this lesson just arrive a lot faster because the consequences are tangible. Your landlord doesn't particularly care that you're having a visibility wound, and your insurance company doesn't care that selling feels really hard and vulnerable this week. Like, your employees do not wanna be paid in Instagram engagement. So the numbers force you to confront reality, and we had to sell something. And so online business, I think, gives us a lot more places to hide. And I think one of the really interesting things about building an online or a service-based business it's sometimes that we can go a long time without having that same hard confrontation, right? 'Cause there's always something else that legitimately looks like important work. And so this is where I wanna lovingly call some of us out, and I'm kind of lumping myself in here because these are things that I myself have done and, and gone through. There's so many productive-looking ways that you can avoid selling Right? So first of all, audience growth. Let's just start right there. You believe that you have to have an audience before you can sell. But that is not true. More consistent posting. Of course it's important to become consistent and get comfortable so you can build a voice and visibility, but that's another way for you to just hide, right? Maybe you need to finally figure out how to do, you know, the new trendy thing, like if it's Reels or TikTok, and you feel like, "I don't know how to do the trendy, cool thing that everybody that's selling is doing, so I have to learn that first." What if your website isn't quite right? You could be worried about branding. You could be worried about your lead magnet. And pricing, right? Pricing is a huge barrier to selling. People are like, "What if the price isn't right? Is it too little? Is it too much?" Then we start thinking about, should I be on LinkedIn? Should I have a podcast? Maybe I should learn how to do Pinterest. Like, all the different platforms become the excuse. Maybe I need another certification, right? All of these things become obstacles to selling. And many of these things are very important. Some of these things may actually need to happen, right? You may actually need to learn a little bit more or you might actually need that certification. Like, that is actually valid in some cases. \ I'm certainly not gonna sit here and tell you that marketing doesn't matter when it matters enormously. But these are all examples of parts of your marketing plan that can also become just sophisticated hiding places. At some point, you have to say, "Here's what I do. Here's who I help. Here's what I can do to help you change that problem that you're having. This is the way that it works. Here's how you can work with me. Would you like to do that? Would you like to come work with me and solve that problem?" And that's the moment that we keep trying to engineer our way around, right? We don't even realize we're doing it. It's really sneaky the way we can get caught tweaking and procrastinating. And so at some point we need to hit the brick wall, because marketing does not remove the need for us to still have to sell, right? So I think sometimes there's this secret hope that if the marketing is perfect and we get it all right, we won't ever actually have to make the offer, right? \ If enough people follow me, \ Or if your content is good enough, people will just buy, i've had people hire me to help them build a funnel, thinking that if the funnel was perfect, they wouldn't have to sell, right? Or if they build a big enough email list, then it's all just gonna happen for them, and that people will just magically arrive at the checkout page and just make the decision. And of course, people can and people do buy without having a personal sales conversation with you. But that's part of why we build these marketing systems, right? Because the invitation has to still exist. You have to be willing to say, "I made this. I believe in this. I believe it can help you, and I would like you to buy it from me. And that's where selling gets vulnerable, right? It's about belief in yourself So I have recently had the privilege to watch my own clients hit this proverbial wall and navigate through it. And, of course, I was helping them, but they really did the work on their own, so their businesses and their goals were totally different. One client was building a brand-new online community. She wanted to bring her first 100 people inside. Another client was launching a brand-new program, first time ever creating this program, and she was looking to get 10 people inside of this new program. And then another client had a well-developed suite of offers, and she wanted to corral all of that together into one cohesive academy and relaunch with a significant financial goal as she did this relaunch, right? So these were three very different offers, three very different audiences, and three very different definitions of success. But internally, they were all going through a very similar process, right? They all got to the point where it was basically, "Okay, shit or get off the pot. Right now, I have built this thing. I have put all the pieces in place to launch this thing. I believe in it deeply. Now people have to know about this, and they have to know that I believe in it." And that means increased visibility. It means talking about it on repeat more than once. It means sending lots of emails in some cases, following up with people that show interest. It means inviting people personally and asking them directly if they'd like to know more. It means posting again, even though you just posted literally yesterday, right? And it's asking people if they wanna know more and if they wanna join. And yeah, it's, it means risking hearing no. It means risking getting ghosted. It means risking failure in the public eye, right? So what changed for these women, and what allowed them to move through that fear was not that suddenly they became fearless, right? It was not that I gave them some sort of magical script that eliminated vulnerability because while I did give them all tons of scripts, that wasn't the key And it also was not that we discovered some type of secret psychological trick that made everybody buy. That was not at all what worked for them. What it was is that they simply believed in themselves and what they were selling. They put in the work to create something that felt so solid, and it- most importantly, it felt like them. It was unique. It was aligned with their personal life experiences. So they weren't trying to perform somebody else's version of success. That never works. We can't perform other people's versions of success, and we can't perform other people's versions of sales. We have to arrive at our own way of making the ask. So these women were amazing. They were actually standing behind the work that was genuinely aligned with who they are and how they want to serve their clients. And it took them a little while to get there, right? Because there is all that creative process, and there is this constant noise of the internet rattling on nonstop all around us. So what landed for me so solidly that I wanted to share is like believing in yourself doesn't make the fear go away, right? And the fear does not disappear. It's that believing in your work, believing in yourself, and believing in your offer does not necessarily make selling more comfortable. You can deeply believe in your work and still feel nervous before you send that email out, right? You can know that your program is excellent and it's gonna get results, and still feel exposed when you talk about it publicly. And you can know that somebody would benefit from working with you, and still feel your stomach kind of flip when you ask them. You know, when you say, "Do you wanna do this?" We're human beings. We're not robots. We're not AI. We are humans. And so the goal is not to become, this like fearless person or to eliminate the fear. The goal is to have something that you believe in so deeply that you're willing to sell while the fear is still there, It's a completely different relationship with sales altogether. So I wanna touch upon this idea of ethical sales, because I think that it plays a big role in this mindset shift. , We have so much exposure to non-ethical sales that it's hard to think about selling without addressing this issue. So ethical sales is not a performance. It's a very real, honest offer being made. Because at its core, selling can actually be incredibly simple. It's really just, "I see what you're struggling with. I understand what you want. I have something that I genuinely believe can help you get the result you want. Here's how that thing works. Would you like to buy it?" Right? That's it. Now, obviously, we can learn to communicate that better. We can have all the platforms and have great content. We can improve messaging and understand people's objections better and learn to create better customer journeys. And of course, I believe in building systems that can make all those conversations happen more consistently. Those are all skills that anyone can learn, but none of those skills require you to become a character or to trick people or to manipulate people or to coerce them. And so that's why I keep coming back to this idea of you being the first foundation of your sales system. Before we talk about, \ content and Instagram and emails and funnels and tech and all of that stuff, it's like, do you believe in this work? Do you believe in your offer? Do you really know your offer inside and out, and that it really can help people? Do you believe in what you've created, and are you willing to stand behind it? And are you willing to just make the invitation, make the ask? 'Cause if you are, now we have something to build a marketing system around. But if you're not, then we have to go back to that core internal conflict and address that. Because I, I certainly don't wanna guide anyone to build some big elaborate and expensive and time-consuming marketing system if they're never gonna walk up to the edge and make the sale. Eventually your business asks you the question, right? Maybe you don't have a department of consumer affairs that's, like, breathing down your neck for, you know, the permit fees, or a commercial kitchen, or payroll, or packaging, or insurance bills that are forcing you to confront this. But eventually, your business is going to ask you the same question or you're gonna stop having a business which is, are we doing this or not? Selling is not selling out. You're operating a business, and if you want to have a business, at some point you have to sell, right? So this is exactly what we're gonna be talking about inside the Solopreneur Sales System. This is gonna be live on September 22nd at 7:00 PM. I'm actually gonna break down for you the simple system that I have followed for many years, the system that I teach to my clients to help them have actual doable marketing and sales systems. So ... 'Cause I don't want you to try to solve sales problems by simply making more and more content, right? I think that's a waste of time. I want you to understand what's supposed to be underneath all of that content. So we're gonna start with you, your beliefs, your capacity, and the business that you're actually trying to build, which is really important. A lot of times we have these ideas of what it's supposed to look like, but we're not really that sure. Then we're gonna look at, , the offer, the messaging, and of course the customer journey, and the simple tech solutions that support your customer journey. And only then, only then do we get to the content and the ongoing sales plan that keeps bringing people to your work. So during the workshop I'm gonna give you some simple ways to map out your own sales system so you can actually see, like, what's already working, what is missing, and where might things be leaking. Because my friend, you said you wanted a business, and that does mean that you're going to have to sell But selling something that you deeply believe in through a system that actually feels aligned and like you and is doable is a very, very different experience from performing somebody else's idea of what a salesperson is supposed to look like. So we're gonna be live together in a room on September 22nd, 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. You can grab your seat at deborahcsmith.com, and my name is spelled the old-fashioned way with an O-R-A-H. Of course, the link is in the show notes. And yeah, grab a seat and come prepared to build, and I will hopefully see you there. And I just wanna say thank you to the people who have been rating and reviewing the podcast. If you love this content, if you're getting some value out of it, I would greatly appreciate, scroll down to the show page wherever you listen to podcasts, if it's Apple or Spotify, it's on the actual page of the official show page. It takes, like, 60 seconds to do it, but it makes a huge difference in my world, and I deeply appreciate you for doing that. All right, my friends, I hope to see you inside the masterclass next week, and there will be a replay, so if you're curious and you can't make it at 7:00 PM on September 22nd, of course, register anyways and I'll send you the content. And until then, may you be vibrant.
