#009 Ethical Influence in Online Sales and Marketing for 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Stef breaks down the critical difference between ethical influence and manipulation in online business. After receiving yet another "pitch slap" DM, she dives deep into why authentic connection matters more than conversion tactics and how building a business with integrity is not only more sustainable but more profitable long-term.

What You'll Learn

• The Pitch Slap Problem: Why fake connection to manufacture urgency destroys trust and damages your reputation
• Golden Retriever vs. Chihuahua Energy: The perfect analogy for understanding authentic vs. desperate networking
• Dr. Robert Cialdini's Research: The godfather of influence research reveals what separates ethical persuasion from manipulation
• 6 Major Red Flags of manipulative marketing (and how to avoid them)
• The 7-Step  for ethical influence that builds trust and converts

Memorable Quotes

• "You can't fake connection to manufacture urgency with someone you don't even know yet."
• "There's a massive difference between being a real human who happens to run a business online and being a business owner who pretends to be human just to get a sale."
• "Your reputation is your business, especially if you're doing it online, especially in 2026 when everything is screenshotted and shareable."
• "You never, ever, ever have to lie in sales. You never have to lie in marketing. Period."
• "People don't connect with highlight reels. They want realness, authenticity, and your humanity."

Featured Research & Resources

• Dr. Robert Cialdini's Influence (7+ million copies sold)
• Routledge Handbook of Persuasion principles
• McKinsey research: Ethical sales increases profits by 15% minimum

Action Items

Audit Your Sales & Marketing Process This Week:

• Review your DMs, content, copy, pitches, and follow-up sequences
• Ask yourself: "Is this respectful? Is this transparent? Would I feel good receiving this?"
  • If the answer is no...change it immediately

Transcript

0:01

Hey friend, welcome back to Call Her Coach. I have to tell you about this message that I got last week, and I've gotten, gosh, probably hundreds at this point, maybe even thousandth at at this point in my decade of being in the online space. So last week someone reached out to me on Instagram, like super friendly. They asked about my day. They complimented my recent post about snowboarding. They seemed. Super genuine, right? And we went back and forth a few times and then literally like out of nowhere, I'm telling you like out of nowhere, mid-conversation, bam. Like she hit me with a pitch slap and that's pee pitch slap. She said something along the lines of like, I noticed you're all about, you know, business or whatever. Uh, have you heard about this amazing opportunity they just launched and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. And, you know, after so many messages over the past decade, I don't get offended. I don't get any of that. I feel kind of sorry for that person. Um, my nervous system really doesn't care either way. But typically, you know, someone's nervous system's gonna be like, uh, like I'm annoyed. Um, you feel like you just got played. Maybe you're just like, what the hell is this person even doing? Like, they don't even know me. Um, da da da, right? Typically people go on the defense. And the thing though that bothers me about these types of messages is that she probably had no idea she was doing anything wrong. She probably has been taught to do this from someone who's been taught to do this, from someone who's been taught to do this, and it doesn't work. You can't fake connection to manufacture urgency with someone you don't even know yet. You can't go into someone's DM and just shower them with compliments just to like soften somebody up to then get your pitch like it's gross and we gotta stop doing it. Now, on the flip side of that, I want you to listen because it's not to say that you shouldn't network online and you shouldn't have genuine conversations and build relationships online. You absolutely should. You absolutely have to. Actually, it's a non-negotiable if you're building a business online. Connection and relationship. Equity is everything in your business. But with that being said, there is a massive difference between being a real human who happens to run a business online and being a business owner who pretends to be human. Just to get a sale, like you can sell to people without making it weird. You just have to actually be a human online, not perform like a human. And I know what you're probably thinking, you're like over there in your head, but like Stef, what does that actually look like? So we're gonna be walking through it a little bit, being a human basically. If you are unaware means that you can, and you have the right to connect with someone because you genuinely vibe with their content or you like something that they said. Welcome to the Call Her Coach podcast. I'm your host, Stef Willis, neuro operational coach and creator of becoming her the neuro identity calibration system behind high-end Regulation for female entrepreneurs. This. Podcast is for high functioning type A women who are done with surface level mindset hacks and ready to understand the science behind success and wealth. Here we blend nervous system science, wealth psychology and tactical, no bullshit business strategy so that you can rewire your identity, expand your capacity, scale your business, and increase your income if you are ready to regulate, recalibrate, and become the most wealthy version of yourself. Let's dive in. You can absolutely have a real conversation with that person, even if you've never met them. And if it naturally comes up, if they ask what you do or the topic flows in that direction organically, you can, you can tell'em, you can say something along the lines of, you know, oh, I run a. X, Y, and Z business helping X, Y, and Z get X, Y, and Z results. Right? Like no big deal either way. But if you're ever curious about what I do more in depth, I'm happy to share more and then move on. Doing that is not manipulation. That is being honest about who you are and what you do. You're not gatekeeping it. It's not a fucking secret. Like we gotta get out of our own heads here. Okay? But a lot of people wanna make it so weird and so awkward. They're like, oh my God, I don't know what to say. Should I pitch this person? Should I? And the analogy I like to give my team all the time is this, okay? You have a golden retriever and you have a chihuahua. Two different types of dogs. Now, let's say your friend comes over and we all know the behavior of these types of dogs, okay? We all know. Let's say your friend comes over and she knocks on the door. Instantly. 99% of the time your chihuahua is gonna be barking. like from the time they pulled in the driveway, they're gonna get to the door, they're gonna knock on the door. Your chihuahua's gonna go absolutely berserk, and your golden retriever is just gonna be like, oh, okay, well maybe it's another human. We'll see. Mom will tell us. Right? Your friend opens the door and the chihuahua is all over that person's leg. So excited. Jumping on their shoes, all the things. And pee's all over your shoes and you're like, my dear God, you're cute. You're cute, but like you're too much right now. Like, I need some space. And then you look over and the golden retriever is sitting there. It's panting. It's got the biggest smile on its face, and it is just a waiting to be pet. So you walk over to Golden Retriever and it leans against your leg. It's a wagon, it's a little tail. It's got a big smile on. You're like, oh my God, you're so cute. Yes, I love you. I wanna do more things with you. Fuck that Chihuahua. that's the type of energy that we wanna have when it comes to communicating as a human being, you wanna be the golden retriever. You don't wanna be the chihuahua. Peeing on everybody's shoes. And when you fake that type of connection, just to set someone up with the picture of being the chihuahua, when you shower someone with compliments that you don't mean now, if you mean them, by all means, like I think we should be going out there and we should absolutely, especially as women be complimenting other women Like we need to be out there lifting each other up. Um, but when you do it just to pretend to care. About them to like love bomb them. And we'll get into that in a minute. Um, it's disgusting. It's gross when you go in there and you're asking them about like their dog and their kid and their vacation only with the intent to soften them up for your business opportunity or your pitch. That is disgusting. That is not networking, that is manipulation. Period. Point blank. Your nervous system knows the difference. Their nervous system knows the difference. And that icky feeling that you get when you do it where you're like, oh, I don't know what they're gonna say, duh. Right? That is your body telling you physiologically that you are out of integrity, and that's what we're gonna be diving into today, okay? The difference between ethical influence on a line and manipulation. So if you're building any kind of business online, this conversation that we're about to have is critical. the things that you do online and how you operate as a human being online, don't just impact your sales. They will impact your soul, your reputation, and at the end of the day, whether you can look at yourself in the mirror a year from now, to be quite honest with you. So let's talk about how influencing people ethically to build a business online that doesn't drain you. And so you can sleep well at night, my friends. Okay. So first, let's go ahead and get clear on what we're actually gonna be talking about here. What's the difference between ethical influence? It's a manipulation and one of my favorite people to learn this from has been Dr. Robert Kini, who is basically, if you don't know him, the grandfather of Influence research. He has spent over 35 years studying what makes people say yes. His book Influence has sold over 7 million copies and cool fact, he's been elected to the National Academy of Science for his. Work on the subject, you guys, he knows his stuff, okay? And the one thing that he emphasizes over and over and over and over again is that ethical influence respects the other person's autonomy and genuinely serves their best interest. Where manipulation, on the other hand, serves your interest at their expense. Big difference. So let me break this down even further based on the research that I have seen from the Rootage Handbook of Persuasion. and what they talk about in there is ethical persuaders operate from three core principles. Okay. Number one, respect. They treat the other person with dignity. Shocker. I know they don't treat them as a sale or a mark to be exploited. Okay, number one. Number two, equality. They don't abuse power dynamics, even when there is a power difference, they make suggestions for that person to see if it would be helpful rather than demanding them. Or telling them to do something. And then number three, tolerance. They're open to being influenced themselves. It's a two-way street. There's no ego there. People can feel the difference between influence and manipulation. You can feel the difference between influence and manipulation, even if you can't always name what's happening. I'm sure you can think back to a certain situation, whether it be with a romantic partner. A coach, a mentor, a friend, a parent, a sibling, a family member where you have felt, how they're treating you, has been a little manipulative. Even if you can't verbalize it, like you feel it in your gut, you know, and maybe it's nothing that they said, maybe it's just the things that they're doing. When someone is trying to genuinely help you versus trying to get something from you, your body knows That's why manipulation will always, always, always, always, always fail long term. It'll work short term, unfortunately, um, but long term it never will. Using manipulation for. Influence sales, marketing, things like that, just it's icky. What it's gonna lead to is complete nervous system dysregulation. That icky feeling inside of someone's body. It's going to lead to buyer's remorse. So even if you do make that sale, maybe your person regrets it later, or they want a refund, they want their money back. Because they sat with it and they're like, yeah, I was just fucking manipulated. Um, don't wanna work with that person. It's gonna cause you Lost relationships, lost relationship equity. People will never trust you again. And there's a statistic out there that says something along the lines of, you know, if you have a good experience, you'll tell maybe one person. And this is with anything. Okay. If you have a good experience, maybe you'll tell one person. If you have a bad experience, you will tell seven. That's on average. So if you burn somebody, if you took advantage of that person, guess what? They're gonna go out there and they're gonna talk about it too. And then lastly, it's gonna cause your reputation to be damaged. They're gonna go out there and tell people what you did. The good news though. With ethical sales and influences that when you are operating out of integrity and you have a transparent sales and marketing process, according to McKinsey research, it actually shows an average increase in your profits by 15% minimally because your clients, your teammates, your audience, your network, They will become loyal advocates for you because. There's so many shitty people out there. So you standing against everyone out there using manipulation tactics online to make sales, you are going to grow the most royal following that you have ever had in your entire life. Your reputation. Make no mistake about this, your reputation is your business, especially if you're doing it online, especially in 2026. When everything is screenshot and shareable, you get to create. in the post Trusts sales era that we are in right now. One unethical move can follow you and your career online forever. I have seen it happen firsthand to a few people that I know. I've had to separate myself from those people when I realized what was going on. And to this day, I have never seen them recover from it. I haven't. People are smart. People don't wanna be treated like another fucking number. so let's get a little practical here. What does manipulation actually look like? Because sometimes it's really, really subtle, but here's some red flags that you can look for. And also, if you've been taught to do any of these things, it's time to unlearn them now. Okay. Number one, creating false urgency. This one bugs me to no end. I only have two spots left when there's actually like 20, right? Um, this price expires at midnight when you do the same thing every week. It's the same offer every single week. Now, on the flip side of that, I will say this, that scarcity, real scarcity is ethics. Maybe you only have bandwidth for five clients, five new business partners this month. If that's true, that's ethical, that's totally fine, but making up fake deadlines and fake spots to create FOMO and pressure people, that's, that's manipulation right there. Okay, number two, exploiting someone's pain without offering any real solution. So maybe this looks like poking at someone's like insecurities about themselves or amplifying their fears in a way, and then swooping in with your product as the only answer. Now, on the flip side of that, again, ethical influence acknowledges pain. We as human beings, we like to stay stuck in what we're doing. Our brains interpret. Our current situation is being safe. Even if we're struggling financially, even if we're struggling emotionally, mentally, right, our brains can interpret and expect what's going to happen. Our brain's job is to keep us safe, not to keep us in growth mode. Ethical influence absolutely acknowledges the pain. You can sit with the pain. You can ask questions around the pain. And you should, but you can also empower people to make their own informed decisions when doing so about whether what you offer your solution is a right fit for them or not. See the difference. Number three, love bombing and then ghosting. This one annoys me to no end. I get so many dms. From women who have partnered with someone else in the industry to learn a specific skill set or start a specific business, and then the person they partnered with ghost them. It is my biggest pet peeve that is so shitty, but love bombing and then ghosting. Someone being super attentive when someone is a prospect and then disappearing the second that someone says no. Or even worse, after they buy. If you are only nice to people when they might give you money or it's beneficial for you, that is not an ethical relationship. That is a transactional manipulation period. Number four, income claims without context. Saying something along the lines of, I made$50,000 last month without ever in any piece of content that you have ever created. Now you don't have to say it in the exact same piece of content, You need to have transparency throughout your marketing, ethical marketing. Okay, so totally fine. You know, I made 50 K last month as long as you're doing it, you know, by F-T-C-S-E-C guidelines. but saying that without mentioning that you've been in the industry for 10 years, that you have invested X amount of money into masterminds, into ad. Um, talking about the struggles that you've had, right? Context matters here. Honesty matters here. The FTC actually has, you know, regulations around this for a reason. Duh. Compliance is sexy when you do it properly. And you know me, if you follow me on my personal social medias, you know, I love talking about money. I think as women, we need to be talking about money way more. There shouldn't be shame around money. We need to rewrite the narrative. And limiting beliefs that we have been taught from a very, very, very young age. We should be talking about money. Money is just a tool. Money is nothing else other than that. So what the fuck are we so scared of? Let's talk about money. Let's help people get more money. Let's help women get more money because in return she's gonna go and she's gonna invest that into communities, into education, into uplifting others, into helping her family. Women invest money differently than men. And if you missed last week's episode, that's what we were actually, I think it was two weeks ago. Um,'cause last week was a two part series. Part two was last week. Anyways, it was in part one or part two of what we talked about, um, the last week or so. Okay. Context matters here. Honesty matters. And I'm gonna say something along like in terms of honesty right here. Okay. I had someone, we're gonna digress for a second, but I had someone the other day, she is one of my new business partners. She sent me a message and she's. Optimizing her social media profiles right now, right? And she had a question about what she should make her cover photo and her bio and all these things, and her fear. She said, I don't want to lie. I don't, you know, have X, Y, and Z results. I don't have any of this. So is it okay if I put this, but I'm lying and that feels gross? And I'm like, baby girl. You never, ever, ever, ever have to lie in sales. You never, ever, ever have to lie in your marketing. Ever, ever, ever. I don't know where it came from, the fact that like, you need to lie and pretend and do all these things to build a relationship with somebody, even though it's not true. Actually, I do know where it came from. There's this guy that was really successful doing that, saying he'd go on vacations with people or he'd be, he would be at the same place that the person was. Um, and he never went to that place on a vacation anyways. He lied about the whole thing just to make people feel like he understood them. So disgusting, gross. You never have to lie in sales. You never have to lie in marketing. Please do not. Um, okay, I digress. Now we come back. Number five, the bait and switch. this is kind of what happens in the DMS and what I talked to you about the message that I got last week. Like, let me pick your brain about, you know, X, Y, Z. Oh, your dress, you're snowboarding. Like whatever. And then it turns into, so have you heard about this business opportunity? Have you heard about this magic amazing unicorn juice? Like you should really get it. Absolutely. Not. Just be direct with somebody, Hey, I run a business in X, Y, Z industry. I don't know if it'd be something you would benefit from taking a look at, but if it is, I'm open to seeing. If a conversation, you know, inside that conversation, I could possibly help you like respect people enough to tell them the truth upfront if that's what you're doing. If you're going in to pitch them, just pitch'em. Don't go and try to soften'em up before the pitch. That's the disgusting. I have people in my dms every single day from women who are in high ticket closing programs that want to close my high ticket offer. They don't come in there and they don't say, and waste my time, Hey, I like this post you did, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. They get straight to the point. So whoever's teaching them, I think a lot of them actually come from Shelby SAPPs. She sells course, so shout out to you, Shelby. but they come in there and they're like, Hey, I see that you're doing this. You're rocking it. Here's my skillset. I'm doing this right now. If I could be of value, if I could be helpful for you. Let me know. Thank you. Thank you so much. Like don't waste my fucking time. Don't butter me up. I'm a busy entrepreneur. You are a busy entrepreneur. Get to the point, and if I'm interested, great. We'll connect. If not, maybe it's down the road, maybe it's never, regardless. It doesn't matter. Get to the fucking point. and then number six, making people feel less than. This is disgusting. I have seen it firsthand, seen people do it, and it is disgusting. Maybe you say something the lines of like, oh, you're not ready to invest in yourself right now. Successful people don't hesitate. They don't wait, and you have it, and you say these things with malicious intent. Make no mistake about it. These are manipulation tactics. They're designed to bypass someone's rational decision making. By triggering shame within their bodies. Ethical influence would never ethical. Influence, never make someone feel broken or inadequate just to make a sale. Now, on the flip side of that, it is absolutely okay to challenge limiting beliefs. Let's say you're on a sales call, it is okay to challenge limiting beliefs. Okay? It sounds a little bit like. You know, investment may be a concern for you right now, And then talk about it. do. You realize that in order for you to get X, Y, and Z result, you're gonna have to do X, Y, and Z. It's gonna be uncomfortable. you realize that? Are you willing to do that? If not, it's okay. But giving them realistic expectations. From the jump, not shaming people for being less than. All right? So if that's what not to do, and those are the red flags, what should you do? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about some things. Um, a framework for ethical influence. Okay. Number one, lead with value always, especially again, in a post trusts sales era, like we gotta evolve online with our marketing effort. It's give, give, give, give, give before you ever make the ask. Educate, serve and help people, whether they buy from you or not. It doesn't matter. One thing I love, um, there's a couple people that I follow online and I love that they do this. When you connect, you know, obviously they have probably an assistant or an autoresponder that greets you in the dms, right? And it's not like, Hey, what brought you here? That's self-serving. Hey, happy to connect. Um, what is it that you do? Um, I mean, that's okay, but like you kind of know where it's going at that point. but what they do is they offer something free. Hey, how can I support you? Thanks for the follow. How can I support you in the future? Hey, thanks for the follow. Here's a free resource that may help you with X, Y, and z. And not ask anything from people. I love when I get those dms, it's not self-serving. When you lead with value first, when you lead from a servant heart, you get to demonstrate what it's actually like to work with you. That's the beautiful part of this. You get to build trust by doing that, and when someone is ready to buy. You are gonna be top of mind because you've already changed their life for free, not because you use some high pressure bro, sales, marketing, sales tactics that pressure them. Number two, be transparent about what you're selling and why. Always. Again, you never have to lie. You never have to gate gatekeep. I tell people exactly what I do when I'm asked. I don't gatekeep, I, I make light of it. Um, sometimes I might say something like, nah, I sell freedom. But they don't get into it, right? Like it's not a big deal. And so many people I see when they are learning sales and marketing for the first time, someone asks them what they do, and they think that they need to have this like elevator pitch, and then they need to like shift the conversation and try to convince them that, dah, dah, dah. No, just answer the question like a human being. I am always, always, always open to sharing my real story. The messy parts, the failures, the wins, the losses, the breakthroughs, all of it. Transparency with your audience will build trust faster than any sales script ever cut. And you guys know I'm a fan of scripts in terms of using them as frameworks, not copy and paste. Okay? We never went to do that. Uh, number three. Respect the, no, that's a complete sentence. It's complete information. Okay. When someone tells you no, they're not rejecting you and I had a conversation about this with one of my leaders the other day. This is something that she's working through. This is a big area of opportunity for her, is rejection. Rejection, fun fact, by the way, inside of your brain, triggers the exact same responses. If you look at it on an MRI as physical pain. Rejection equals physical pain to your brain and your brain's job, again, is what to protect you from pain. So rejection failure, which we'll do a, we'll, do a podcast episode on failure, don't you worry. those types of things are triggering the exact same things going on in your brain. You have to override your internal baseline operating system. Rejection is not. A reflection of you, your worth, your value, or anything. There's a quote out there that's like rejection is redirection, right? Fully, wholeheartedly believe that rejection is okay. Rejection should not make your cortisol spike. It should not increase your heart rate. Should not increase anything. It should just be like, oh, okay, cool. They're giving me information right now. Maybe this isn't the right fit. Maybe it's not, not the right time, maybe it's not the right offer for them. Maybe your solution really can't help them. Okay? Now, again, on the flip side of that, you can absolutely, and you should get clarity over what that means for someone, but you never wanna chase someone. You can get clarity, and if it's still not in alignment, thank them, mean it, move on. Be there in the future to support them. If they need it. That's it. It's that simple. The people who are supposed to be in your world will say yes. The ones who aren't won't, and that's perfect. Number four, this goes in with what we just talked about of respecting the know, okay, let people self-select. Not everyone is your person, and that is beautiful. Your job is not to convince everyone that your solution, you are like the end all, be all for everything, okay? Your job is to clearly communicate what you offer and who it's for, and then let people decide for themselves. When you try to convince someone who is not a fit, you are going to end up chasing them. And what happens when we chase anything in life, it runs faster and farther. I saw the other day when I was scrolling on my phone how to train your dog. Like if your dog, runs away from you when you're on walks, right? A lot of people wanna chase their dog. Their dog doesn't know that their owner's wanting them to come back. The dog is like, oh my gosh, my owner's playing with me. They're running with me too, right? So they run faster when instead, you should just. Stay where you're at or even turn around and walk the other way. Not run, but walk the other way and your dog's gonna be like, oh shit. Oh, I gotta go back this way. Just kidding. So a lot of times I will actually lovingly, you know, push people away. Like, Hey, it sounds like you might not be in a space for this right now, and that's okay. Right? I refuse to chase anybody. There are people tied to your destiny that you haven't even met yet. Don't get caught up on one person. Plus, if you do end up beating them down to a yes, you'll be working with someone who's unhappy. They probably are gonna need a lot of support. They're gonna make a lot of excuses. They're gonna be in victim mode, and they're gonna suck the life out of you. So honestly, just save yourself and let people self-select. Okay. Number five, share your real story, including the hard parts. Man, we just gotta get into doing this more, and I'm such a hard ass when it comes to this. It's hard for me to be vulnerable because I feel like I put a positive spin on everything in my life, But there's so much power and vulnerability, and I didn't understand this until about probably seven, eight years ago. So for those of you who don't know, I started in. Online social selling with a low ticket MLM about a decade ago, and it took me almost like 18 months, I think, to recruit my first business partner. I was horrible at social media. I was horrible at sales. I did everything wrong and I just felt icky. I got invited to go to a women's leadership conference in antique gu, Guatemala. The other women that were on this trip were there because they won awards in sales, recruiting, things like that. I got invited basically because I was mis congeniality. I helped the most amount of people in our organization without getting anything in return. So I got an award, I think three people did for that. And I was one of them. So I always say like, I'm like mis congeniality. but in here I was sitting at a table with people who were far more successful than me. I felt really out of place. But I had conversations with these women. I'm like, you know, what would be one thing that, you know, advice you could give me? And I don't remember how the conversation started, but that's, you know, the gist of it. And one woman looked at me. I will never forget this. And she said, have you ever cried on a live, this is back when lives were a big thing on social media. You could get thousands upon thousands of people to watch you live. It was when it first rolled out, she said, have you ever cried on a live? And I was like, oh, absolutely not. No. Why would I do that? Like, I'm here to sell a product. I'm here to sell makeup. Why would I ever do that? And she said. That's why you haven't yet. And I was like, what do you mean? it didn't make sense to me then until probably, you know, a few months to a year later. I was like, holy shit. People don't want the highlight reel. They can't relate to perfect. What they can relate to is vulnerability, transparency, struggle because it humanizes that person and it makes the other person feel like, Hey, I'm not alone in this. This. So from that moment on, I've made it my mission. I don't just share my wins, I share everything. I mean, hell on this show I cried for like 20 minutes to y'all sharing my 2025, year of the Shed and Rebirth. If you ever watched that episode, um, that to date is my best episode that I get the most feedback on. And I almost, almost didn't publish it because I was like, nobody's gonna wanna hear this. This is kind of like woe is me like shit that's happened to me in 2025. But me recording that unscripted completely gave people permission that it's okay that they were going through the same thing, and that was the feedback that I got. It was so helpful for people to hear that episode. They found strength from it. And if I would've never done that, if I would've never shared the messy part. somebody could still be sitting there thinking, I'm alone in this, and that's horrible. So be the person that shares the relationship difficulties, the personal struggles, share the moments you want to quit. People do not connect with the highlight reels. They are over the perfectly curated lifestyles and overly filtered pictures. That's ai like. The thing that's gonna separate you in 2026 and beyond is imperfection is doing it messy. People nowadays want realness. They want authenticity. They want to be able to relate to you, and they want to connect to you and your humanity. When you're honest about your journey, you give people realistic expectations so that they know what they're getting into and it's going to empower them way more. Then if you were to just paint this beautiful, perfect picture, Okay, number six, price, integrity, charge what it's worth and deliver more. That's my motto. Don't ever feel like you need to discount something either, by the way, just to make a sale out of scarcity. I, I can't, I can't get behind that. It devalues you as a human and you as the work that you've put in to develop whatever it is. Let's say a coaching program devalues it completely. Charge what your product or service is actually worth, and then over deliver every single time. Give more value than someone pays for. Show up for your new people, your new teammates, your new clients, your new customers, like they are your only one. And watch what happened. And then lastly, number seven, follow up without stalking somebody. I am huge on a follow up, especially in sales and marketing. If you have a business online, you cannot operate without a follow up system. You cannot, you're gonna be missing out on so much fucking money. It's unbelievable. Now, there's a huge difference here in terms of follow up. Between someone saying something along the lines of, and this is kind of the approach that I take, okay, hey, I just had a couple meeting, or I just had a couple minutes between meetings and I wanted to touch base with you from our conversation last, last week or yesterday. You know, whatever is X, Y, Z still a priority for you right now? If not, like no big deal. I just wanna make sure that if it is, I'm showing up for you in a way that supports you, and if not, again, no big deal. That's just gonna allow me to focus on the women who this is a priority for right now. Where do you think we should go from here? That's something that I'll send in a voice message to someone as a follow up. It's very direct. It's very real. It's also like, hey, we need to both be honoring our time. Time is something that we cannot get back. We can always make more money, but we cannot get our time back. And if someone isn't in the space right now. That's okay. How do I show up to support you now or in the future? You let me know. Now the difference between that type of message and this one. Um, Hey babe, I'm just checking in. Are you still thinking about that opportunity? You still thinking about buying this thing? Uh, you don't wanna miss out? We got dah, dah, dah, X, y, and Z. Like I only two spots left. Ew. Disgusting, gross. The first one is respectful of someone's boundaries as well as. Yours as a business owner, as the CEO. The other one you're chasing. You are the chihuahua. It's desperate, it's pushy, disgusting. Probably when I said it, your body was like, Ew, that's gross. Right? But the first one, you're professional, you postured. You are the CEO of your business. You are the CEO of your time. Where should we go from here? Okay. As we wrap this up, I want you to remember, ethical influence is about helping people make empowered decisions that are right for them, not just right for your bank account. And when you do this consistently, when you prioritize people over bottom dollar, when you're able to lead with integrity and when you respect someone's autonomy, you get to build a business. That you fucking love and doesn't drain you and lead eventually to burnout. You build a business that energizes you because you are helping people instead of using and manipulating them. And the beautiful thing is that it's way more profitable long term, anyways, to do things Ethically, ethical sales and ethical influence will create loyal customers, clients, fans. Referrals, audience, all the things. There's no amount of money that you could spend to buy that. So my challenge for you this week is to audit your sales and marketing process. Look at your dms. Look at the content that you're creating. Look at the copy that you're creating. Look at your pitches. Look at your follow up sequences. Look at it all. And then ask yourself, is this respectful? Is this transparent? Would I feel good receiving this message? And if the answer's no, change it, no big deal. Your business and your soul will thank you later, I promise you. And if anything that we talked about on today's show resonated with you, I'd love to hear your biggest question about ethical sales and marketing. you can DM me on Instagram at Call Her Coach podcast. The link is in the show notes. As always, I read every message and maybe I will address a question that you have live on the show. So thanks for being here. I will see you next week.