Magnetic Selling: From Icky to Aligned

What if selling could feel like service?

In this solo episode, Lauri Smith unpacks the vulnerable, often uncomfortable act of making offers—and how to transform it from something that feels icky and manipulative into an act of alignment, service, and magnetism. She shares her own early struggles with “forgetting to ask” or over-explaining like a district attorney, the moment a mentor told her “you didn’t even invite them,” and how she discovered a more soulful way.

Through stories and practical insights, Lauri guides you from head-driven selling to heart-led invitations and soul-aligned magnetic selling. Whether you’re leading a workshop, giving a talk, or in a one-on-one conversation, this episode will help you shift from speak to sell → speak to serve—and feel the difference in your body, your energy, and your results.

Takeaways:

1. Selling often triggers childhood vulnerability—the feeling of waiting to be picked.
2. Cookie-cutter “speak to sell” formulas feel icky because they put money above service.
3. When selling from our heads alone,we risk over-explaining and proving our case.
4. Bringing our hearts online connects us to the excitement for our client’s transformation.
5. The deepest shift happens when our soul leads: inviting from non-attachment.
6. Magnetic selling means aligning with our purpose and serving our client’s journey.
7. Speak-to-serve reframes selling as holding space for someone’s transformation.
8. The right clients are magnetized when we’re aligned; the wrong ones naturally repel.
9. Selling becomes a sacred moment when it’s about presence, not pressure.

Chapters

• 0:00 The vulnerability of making offers
• 2:30 The “you didn’t even ask” moment
• 4:36 The problems with cookie-cutter “speak to sell” formulas
• 9:20 Sacred Shift: Speak to Serve
• 12:19 Head, Heart and Soul Selling
• 15:27 Non-attachment and inviting from presence
• 17:55 Invitation to the Magnetic Selling Playshop

Transcript

Lauri: 0:32

Hello and welcome back to Soulful Speaking. I want to start out today by asking you what thoughts, sensations, emotions and energy come up when you hear the word sell. What thoughts, emotions, energy, sensations and stuff come up when you share your offer or when you even imagine inviting someone to work with you? Really notice, One of the things that wild-hearted leaders and loving rebels and service-oriented business owners struggle with the most is making offers, aka asking someone to work with us. Asking someone is vulnerable. All of a sudden we feel like the little kid on the playground hoping to get picked. Sudden we feel like the little kid on the playground hoping to get picked. So it's really tempting to look for a hack or a template or a shortcut, to kind of go on autopilot and feel like we're really inviting people. And yet, at the same time, these soul-driven mission people really long to be able to invite people to work with them in a way that feels authentic and aligned. And the wildest dream might even be to tap into the pulse of our purpose when we're inviting someone to work with us. Someone to work with us, Because all those one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter, speak-to-sell approaches out there have failed us, because, even though we chose them, because we wanted the hack or the shortcut, they didn't feel quite right.

Lauri: 2:31

For the first too many years that I was in business, I struggled with this too. One day, in the very beginning of my business, I led a workshop that lit people up and at the end of it, the curator, who had invited me to this organization to lead a workshop, helped me carry my stuff to my car, and when I was done packing my trunk, he turned to me and he said may I give you some feedback? And I totally braced for him to say I disappointed him, or something like that, which is a whole other podcast episode in itself. What he actually said was you had them leaning in, they were hungry for more and you didn't even ask. And that moment hit me really hard. I realized I wasn't actually serving my people the people I'm here to help as fully as I could. If I didn't at least invite them to keep going In my struggle years, things like this would happen all the time. I would either completely forget to ask someone if they wanted to work with me like that, or even one-on-one whether it was one-on-one or a huge crowd of people or eventually I would ask from my head, over-explaining and kind of proving my case like a district attorney from the TV show Law Order. Neither one of those options worked, by the way. Eventually I found my way to invite other people to work with me in a way that did feel authentic and aligned. Authentic and aligned and, spoiler alert, we'll unpack this more during this episode. I did that by connecting the moment of invitation to serving them and to the potential client's transformational journey. Doing that is magnetic selling.

Lauri: 4:37

So let's take a look at the icky problem with those cookie cutter speak to sell formulas. The icky problem begins with it's putting money at the top of the food chain, making it the most important thing. It's kind of like making money God in your business and if you're a soul S-O-U-L-preneur, someone who's building your soul-driven business around some transformation, some dream, some change that you want to see in the world, making money the most important thing is never going to feel good for you. It's out of alignment and because it feels icky to you, it's not going to help you magnetize your soulmate clients. The second thing is scarcity.

Lauri: 5:33

Speak to Sell is another one of those outdated one-size-fits-all approaches and this one in particular, in its roots, was designed to rev people up and make them, panic and run to the back of the room and fill out the limited number of spots. It's a formula for making a presentation that comes out of old school capitalism, which had scarcity baked into the DNA of its marketing. If you're a loving rebel, a soul-driven visionary, when you try to do that speak-to-sell formula, it probably feels wrong, hard icky, inauthentic, manipulative, used car salesman-ish, All those things that we don't want to be. Not all selling is that Some people, some business coaches out there, have been able to adjust that template on their own and align it with them and make it work. And if you're a wild-hearted leader who wants to speak from the pulse of your purpose, it's so outdated it's probably never going to work for you. Another problem with it is that it feels like one long commercial.

Lauri: 6:57

One long commercial that is placing the money as the top goal and you don't want are also sensitive, empathic, loving, soul workers, light workers. They can probably feel the inauthenticity. They can sense the really long commercial presentation coming a mile away. So let's look at the sacred shift that we can make Replace speak to sell with speak to serve. Replace. That's what you want to do. You want to help change the world with the magic and the message that you're here to bring. So speak to serve with your talk, workshop, whatever it is, and then, at the end, include a moment where you invite them to continue their transformational journey. You name your services and let them know that there is a next step that they could take with you to continue transforming.

Lauri: 8:32

When you are aligned with the service that you're here to bring and you invite people from there, that's magnetic selling. Selling is a process of magnetism. When we're in alignment, the right people are auto-magically magnetized toward us and the wrong people, who we are not a match for, are repelled. If, on the other hand, we are out of alignment with ourselves, we become like a magnet turned backwards, where we're repelling the right people, our soulmate clients, and potentially drawing in the wrong ones or repelling all of them. We are not in it for the money. We're in it for the dream, for the transformation, for the change. As Simon Sinek would say, the why. There's a huge difference and you can feel it right now between money being the most important thing, money holding the place of God in our business and service and expression of what we're here to express being the most important thing, and allowing the money to serve, fuel and nourish that.

Lauri: 10:05

So throw out your speak to sell playbook and do this instead. Replace speak to transform or speak to serve. Design your talk with your favorite clients, transformation in mind, their journey, know where your talk falls in that client that you love's transformational journey, and then you can create your one of a kind talk, the talk that only you can create. From there and from that talk, your soulmate, people will be magnetized toward you and will hire you. And in the talk, at the very end, when you're reaching that selling part, which is when you let them know what you have to offer and invite them to work with you, Think of it as you holding the space for them to take the next step on their transformational journey. Speaking is a spiritual process and that means this kind of moment can be a really potent spiritual moment, a moment of transformation for you and them. And it's true whether they say that their next step is with you yes, I want to work with you or an empowered no to you and a yes to something else. Imagine how that feels Speak, serve, invite. How does that feel different from speak to sell? That's when selling isn't about the money first, it's about alignment, service, transformation, the dream, the why.

Lauri: 12:09

I don't remember exactly how long into my business, probably five, six years after the moment where he said you didn't even invite them. I was leading a vocal presence module at a yoga teacher training and I noticed that I had been on a journey since that first moment. My head had eventually come on board and I was inviting people from my head, selling from my head, like that district attorney proving a case Probably proving the case to myself more than to them, which is what we tend to do and then I had managed to bring my heart online and for a long time I thought that was like the be all end all. My heart really wants to work with this person, for them and for me, or these people in this room that I've had such an amazing time with. During my talk, I can feel the vibrant energy. Or during a workshop, like the one at the yoga teacher training, the heart is the part that feels how great it would feel for us to get to work with them and how great it would be for them to have the transformation. And then this one day in the yoga teacher training it was a three-hour workshop came to the end. My head looks down at the notes and it sees oh, this is where I invite them to take another step.

Lauri: 13:48

And in yoga there are all sorts of attention is paid to highest self and highest and best good for all and non-attachment. And I was really feeling the pulse of my purpose, like there was white and golden energy and love and confidence and expression and possibility filling the room, and expression and possibility filling the room. And I opened my mouth while embodying what I'm here to do and I said I'm going to be honest. A part of me is a little attached. The part of me that is attached wants you to continue this journey and you can go out and do that on your own, unsupported. So turn to your partner and make a commitment for how you will continue this on your own. If you want support on the journey to make it smoother, faster, easier, more direct, more full, I would like to invite you to book a one-on-one with me. I've got a sign-up sheet up here. Yada, yada, yada, and I had almost every single person in the room because they were so aligned. Come up to me.

Lauri: 15:28

I don't remember if the words I used just now are exactly the words that I used back then. I do know that the head remembered to do it. The heart said I would love to keep working with you, and the soul helped me to show up fully and invite them and allow that to happen from a place of non-attachment, from the place of. My job is to invite and yours is to choose what's best for you. This is all magnetic selling, connecting your invitation to service and to their transformational journey.

Lauri: 16:09

Your head remembering to ask. Your heart asking the people we'd love to work with, from our excitement for ourselves and for them, and our soul doing that from a place of non-attachment. When we do that, the right people are magnetized, the wrong ones are repelled. It's not pressure, it's repelled. It's not pressure, it's not commercial, it's not convincing. It's presence Intend, set the intention for the emotional or energetic experience we want for them. Align our body, our breath and our energy with our most expressive self, Breathing, opening our hearts, energizing the room and hugging the room with our energetic arms, Inviting, giving their space for their half of the conversation and watching, moment by moment, silence by silence. So now take another moment and imagine yourself in a one-on-one, in a workshop, inviting from this magnetic place. How does that feel different than when this episode started. What feels different to you when you shift from avoiding to doing it in a protected way, from your head to being in your heart and soul.

Lauri: 17:56

If you want to go deeper in this, come to the Magnetic Selling Play Shop. You can register for it when the next one is happening. As I'm recording this, the next one will be happening on October 6th 2025. Go to my website, voice-matterscom, and click on events and from there you can register. It is a safe, sacred space to embody and practice this skill with like-hearted people that are walking the same path, doing the same thing at the same time. What if selling could feel like service and your only job was to hold the space for someone else's transformation was to hold the space for someone else's transformation. If this episode touched you in some way, served you in some way, helped you in some way, please take a moment to rate it. Follow the show, share it with a friend so we can help the people who think speak to sell and other things like it feel icky and like they need a shower afterwards to know that there is another way. Thanks so much and I'll see you back here soon.