249. Trust “Recession” Hype & The Real Truth About Why Talking About Yourself Feels Awkward

Last week, we had a spicy convo about getting back to basics and doing the *real* work that moves the needle. And if you listened, you probably felt a little called out 😅.

This week, we’re going a layer deeper because how you show up while doing that work matters.

You can post more, sell more, all the things more… but if people don’t trust you, it’s not going to work..

And TRUST seems to be a hot topic right now with many claiming we’re in a “trust recession” which I call BS. 

Here's what we get into:

• Why selling feels “icky” when trust is off 
• How to share your work without making it all about you
• The Trust Equation (yes, there IS a formula, from a BOOK!)
• Where AI is quietly breaking trust with your audience and what to do instead
• The shift that makes your content land better
• Plus a quick challenge to notice what you’re consuming this week

Ready for another week feeling fired up? Let’s go.

P.S. I’ve got a new program coming out called The Refinery and I’m stoked to share more about it soon. If you want to get on the waitlist or explore working together, >>click here to start the conversation.

And if you’re not on my newsletter yet, DM me “Newsletter” on Instagram—I send one every Friday and it’s where my best stuff lives.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

https://heathersager.com/episode249

Transcript

Heather (00:10)
Well, hey friend and welcome to another episode of the Hint of Hustle podcast. We're back. Thank you so much for all the love and messages and replies from the return episode last week. It's so good to be back. It's so good to be back talking with you, getting my voice back on camera, on audio. It's like riding a bike. You know how to do it. You can do it again and again and again. I want to talk today about, I had an original plan.

what we're going to cover today, but I just changed it here this morning based around some feedback I got from the last episode. So I posted a clip of last week. I posted my spiciest yelling at you part of last week's episode. you, if you missed it, go back and listen to that episode before you listen to this one. But I talked about calling out Sally and talking about, we can't like

We can't keep griping about our business being stagnant, about the industry, about our competitors, about AI and all these things when we are not spending the time doing the things we need to be doing in our businesses for it to grow. In fact, the newsletter I sent to my crew last week, side note, if you are not on my newsletter, might this be a quick...

Not quick. This is your direct invitation. Get your butt on my email list because every Friday I send a damn good email. It's always story related. It's always very Heather. It's always written from me. I do not use AI. There's always a really, really good business insight that's going to leave you better than I found you. It's gonna get you thinking more presently, more strategically, more powerfully about your business. My newsletter is where it's at.

I don't have a name for it yet. I'm working on that. But I hear from a lot of people, they really enjoy reading it. So anyways, get on that. If you go to heathersager.com, if you sign up for any of my freebies, you'll end up on my newsletter or just DM me the word newsletter on Instagram and my team will manually add you. I don't have an automation set up, but just email me newsletter and I'll help you with that. But I was sharing this morning, I wrote the newsletter that went out last week. I'm recording this on Friday. I was talking about how it's really, really important we get back to the

basics in business. Now this term back to the basics is this idea that we really need to focus on what moves the needle in business, which is what I was alluding to in last week's episode. If you want sales, focus on talking about your programs. If you need more sales call, talk about the value of getting on the phone with you. We have to be talking to our audience and directing them to the result we want. That was what that rant was. And I posted that little slice on social media.

I to be honest with you, I posted it and I immediately was like, I should take it down. In fact, I unpublished it from Facebook because the second word out of my mouth was the word fuck, even though I whispered it. It had fuck on it. I was really shouty and my immediate, I don't know, it's my manifestor wound or whatever that is. I was like, my gosh, people are gonna be like, why is she yelling?

Why is she so angry? Like, ugh, why does she? And Facebook is a little more aggressive with comments, so I immediately deleted off Facebook. I kept it up on Instagram. And I was locked out because I have this new thing on my phone where I am locked out all of my apps after I hit a certain limit. Side note, we should talk about that later because it's been the coolest thing ever. I have had the best social media habits so far this year. I've been doing it for 120 days and totally rocking it. But I got locked out, so I had no choice. The video had to stay on Instagram.

And as I started seeing the comments, I'm like, okay, it's okay to be spicy. It's okay to yell. And I laugh because even on my coaching calls with my clients, they actually ask for spicy Heather to come out. Spicy Heather will yell at you, not in a mean kind of way, but in the way that you need to hear what I'm saying to get out of whatever ridiculous thinking and lane that you're going down. I need to snap you back to focus on what matters. And that's what that was about.

But one of the private messages I got about that video where I was saying, show me your calendar and I will show you your priorities around sales. The response was, Heather, I love that message. I needed to hear it, but I'm so uncomfortable talking about myself. I keep posting around different podcasts that I've done and different things that I have going on and it just feels like it's me, me, me, me, me all the time. And I wanted to address that today as a follow up to last week.

because if you feel super uncomfortable talking about yourself or making sales, there's a very specific reason for it. And I think it dovetails with a conversation that a lot of people are talking about online right now, and it comes down to trust. And that is what we are going to dive in today.

What framed out this conversation was a reply back to that client and I said, anytime you're feeling this sense of resistance in your business, we have to learn to question it and question it not by just shut it down, but get curious around what is it telling us? So in that situation, that student of mine was like, oof, I'm not comfortable talking about myself. And by asking, well, what am I uncomfortable with?

Okay, well for her it was the she felt weird where she was constantly talking about herself or promoting a podcasting interview or promoting a resource and it felt like she was just talking about herself all the time. And I said what could that be telling you? And it was essentially saying that well she's here to serve other people so why am I talking about myself? Okay so quick solution is when I say you should sell your ass off more

I'm not saying you should talk about how awesome you are, should talk about how awesome your program is, you should talk about your freebie, you should talk about this awesome visibility placement that you have, look at me, me, me, me, me, because that isn't gonna do anything for your business. That's just gonna make you maybe popular. People might admire you, people might go you, they'll cheer you on, but they won't look to you as the one to learn from and they definitely won't hire you. So what's the difference?

we really need to get present to is you need to think about where you're putting the focus of your conversation. When you write an email or you do a video or you do a podcast episode or you go on a tangent on an interview you need to think about how does this serve the person listening. You know that expression leave people better than you found them? That's the thing that you have to come back to over and over and over again.

One of the things that I get compliments on all the time in my content, and it's because I have a lot of peers who are creating content online too, I get the feedback all the time is, Heather, I love how you're able to take a seemingly random story about your kids, about your pelvic floor, about your kitchen, about your cooking, about whatever else, and you somehow turn it into a business lesson and something that I really needed to hear in that moment. How do you fricking do that? And it's this thing.

anytime I share something, I'm always thinking about, I'm not just sharing something to share something. I mean, maybe sometimes I am, like the time I shared on my Instagram stories, like, hey, I'm redoing my entryway in my house. Help me, I can't figure out what to do with this cabinet. There's no value in my audience. I'm not gonna be like, let me show you seven ways to redo your entry so you can have a more peaceful morning with your kids out the door. No, that wasn't what that was. I was doing conversational stuff for that.

That aside, when you're thinking about content for your business, we need to be thinking about how is what I'm sharing, how does it relate to the audience? What's the transferable lesson here? So when I talk about selling, when I talk about whether it's your offers or maybe even sharing in this client example, she was spent on a lot of podcasts lately. Well, here's the thing. Don't email your list all the time being like, look, I'm on the X, Y, and Z podcast. Hey, look at me, I'm on this. Your audience is just going to be a yay for you, celebrating you.

but what's in it for them? Okay, so what we wanna think about, just a really simple shift. Hey, this week I was interviewed on, I just finished interviewing on the Nourish CEO podcast. What I can do is talk about how one of the things that we talked about in that conversation, this is true, because I've literally just had this on this thing, this interview right before I'm hitting record here, is we talked about how there's this lack of congruency between,

who we are as people when we're off stage versus who we think we need to be when we show up on stage in our business. Whether we're on a podcast or we do short form video or we create a sales video on our website or we do a webinar or we speak on someone else's stage. We think we need to be a certain way. There's a certain way of being polished, how a speaker shows up. There's this thing that happens. And I call it like, it's like my mom in the 80s and 90s, she would be like at home.

yelling at us to get off the kitchen counter and then the phone would ring and she'd answer the phone and she'd put on her telephone voice. Hello, this is Clara. How can I help you? We do a version of the telephone voice. And in this podcast interview, I go into why that happens and more importantly, how to shift it. So here's the link. Check it out on the nurse CEO podcast, right? So that would be an example of if I'm going to be sharing, Hey, check out this thing or check out this bundle that I'm a part of or the summit that I'm in. What you have to constantly be communicating is how does this help your audience?

That's the filter. That's the lens we always have to be thinking about. And when we think about it this way, it turns from, I'm uncomfortable talking about myself to the, I'll talk about myself in like a pathway to help my audience. So this is something that I do every week in my newsletter as I share a story from my life. A lot of times they're stupidly self-deprecating.

but I use that as an example to connect with my audience and then pull in a business level lesson that they're resonating with. I really want you to think about what's your skill level of transferring storytelling or transferring things from your life, which is storytelling, into lessons for your audience. This is something that you have to get better at. When you think about sharing your podcast episodes, if you think about promoting your own podcast, you think about promoting your freebies,

storytelling is an incredible way to do this. What's the context for why this matters? Storytelling is a really great way to do it, but put your audience at center. And this really dovetails into what I think we need to talk about here is have you heard people lately talk about the great trust recession? I say that kind of dripping in sarcasm a little bit because I'm just laughing. This comes up every couple years. People are talking about

People are skeptical, people are untrusting, yada yada, it's taking longer for people to buy, I'm sure there might be some truth to this, but I think all of this is just BS. It's just people putting another reason out in the world why people aren't buying. And the truth is, there's always people buying, right? The buying behaviors might have adapted, right? Because technology has changed, all right? The way that people consume information has changed drastically in the last 10 years. I think about this, what is it? It's 2026 right now.

So think about 10 years ago, 2016, I was recently going through my cell phone pictures and I was laughing and going, man, I have no B-roll from when I went to Italy in 2014. have no videos of when my youngest son was born. We didn't really do video on our cell phones back then. I actually remember my husband was very excited because he bought a camcorder, like an actual camcorder. This was in 2014 when he and I went on like a big month long trip to Italy.

And I have this ridiculous photo of him with a backpack on, totally being a tourist, like with that camcorder, like at the Coliseum or whatever. And he was so excited. But I laughed because I don't have any of that on my cell phone. I say this for you because, oh my gosh, how the world has changed, even the last six years, right? Think about what was going on in 2020. Remember Clubhouse? Did we even do that anymore? No. Before that, there was a streaming platform that was audio, Periscope.

Do you guys remember that from like 2013, whatever that time period was? Technology changes, the way we consume information changes. Even YouTube has changed, right? There's long form video, but now there's shorts, shorts all the time. I'm sure all these things like, shit changes. Technology changes. So of course how we consume information adjusts and adapts, right? That, that.

It's just normal. That's business. mean, think about like how people did business in the 60s versus the 70s versus the 80s. I don't know those details because I was born in the 80s. But thinking even like in the 90s, I remember the 2000s when we started using the internet. And I remember I didn't even get a Facebook page, I think until 2028, 2029. And by then it was invite only you had to know someone on a college campus who had Facebook, right? I'm probably popping up some memories for you. Some of you, you might be a little young that you're like, I don't even know what you're talking about, Heather. Welcome.

welcome to me and my almost mid 40s. But I share this with you is please do not get distracted trying to blame the industry, trying to blame the market, trying to blame all these other things going on. This shit is just business. Business has the same principles they have always had. And in the industry that you and I work with, the information industry where we're coaches, where we're course creators, where membership site orders, we're speakers, consultants, whatever this is, our businesses is.

based around the information and our expertise. Information in our head, our expertise that we have, right? We bring it out into the world in some kind of digital product or coaching or some kind of way where we help other people get a transformation. In that kind of business, right? We really have to get present that yeah, the way people consume information, that has shifted, but we don't need to get swept up and caught up in all these like whining and complaining about, no.

Like don't go into fear based. Do not subscribe. Okay, let me just go on a side tangent here, because I think you need to hear me. I really want you, I'm gonna give you a challenge assignment right now. I want you to open up your freaking eyes and I want you to pay attention. We're gonna do an experiment, you and me, for the next seven days. I want you to pay attention to your social media feed and to your inbox specifically. Pay attention to the information that you're consuming. And I want you to notice.

Is this information that feels expansive? Is it getting you excited about the future? Or is it making you worry or overthink about your current situation? Is it making you worry or overthink or question how you're doing things right now? And you know what I mean by this, right? This idea of like, is it talking about how things have changed, so you need to change or this way doesn't work anymore or I don't know, whatever else, right? You know the difference between expansive

and constrictive content. Expansive is about future and possibility and aligning values and really thinking about how do you want to show up in this world. Constrictive is the, this isn't working, the industry's this, I hate coaches who do this, whining about the way other people do things. That's the big one. If you see people whining or complaining about the way things are, one, notice if it's attached to a pitch, but two, is it just

airing out their own grievances? it the whining complaining? I want you to take note of this next week. And I want you to start noticing the words that are coming out of your mouth. Are you speaking to the possibility or are you speaking to your annoyances and frustration? And I want you to get present to this. And I want you to notice when you're in more of the whining and complaining, what's your like optimism? What's your outlook?

probably kind of grumbly and fumbly and probably a little annoyed overall about business. But when you start tuning that shit out or even unsubscribing from that kind of stuff and start focusing on, okay, I'm only going to listen to podcasts. I'm only going to stay subscribed to newsletters that lean in to how I want to show up moving forward. I want you to like cut a line in the sand right now.

Who are you going to put yourself around? You know the common expression, you are the sum of the five people you hang out with? I've been talking a lot about this to my tween lately and really just helping him gain his confidence and start filtering out how to make friends that he feels good about, especially as he moves into middle school. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately in my own environment because right now, most of my connections and closest friends, they don't even live where I live. They're virtual. And I really have to start thinking about, I'm very much

a I'm not immune to this. am very much a product of my environment. I notice that if I start feeling really grumpy, if I start feeling behind, I start whatever, and I realize, well, what kind of content have I been consuming? Who am I been consuming it from? If it's someone who tends to complain about past coaches or complain about the industry or whine about whatever, I start noticing all the things that are wrong with the world. We are drawn to what we focus on.

The idea of the law of attraction. You know this one, this idea that like attracts like, if you start thinking about things are wrong, you will find more things that are wrong and you will attract more things that are wrong because you're looking for it. You hear me when I say that? Versus if you start looking at what's right, if you start leaning into how you want to show up, what you want your future to look like, right? And I'm not talking about this bullshit of around like,

let me just act as if I already have it manifest my dream like I I get it but also like let's be let's be in the moment be present and let's continually be the best version of ourselves how am I being the best version of myself in the moment this is something I've been really really present into lately of how do I lean in a better version of being the best version of me is an expansive thinker it's an optimistic thinker and it's helping my people think in that way too

I want to leave people better than I found them. That is how I keep coming back in my marketing. So where this comes down to connecting the dots back to what I talked about last week with sales, I was reminded as I was sharing with this former student or associate current student, was sharing with them around switching how you think about sales instead of making it about you, you, you, you, turn it onto your audience of how can you make it about them. It reminded me going back to this whole trust recession.

It reminded me of a conversation I had years ago on my podcast with Andrea Howe. She's the co-author of The Trust Equation. She created this field book with the author, Charles Green. The Trust Equation, I will link it to that episode, it's so good. I think we did it in 2020, if I remember correctly.

A link to that episode was really, really good. Andrea is incredible. She's been a great business friend for years. I actually hired her as a consultant trainer in my old company to come out and lead seminars for our employees around building trust for our sales teams and our client services teams. So she's incredible. I've worked with her personally on that program and project when she came in my old company. And then we've just stayed connected over the years because she's a speaker and consultant. But I wanted to share with you.

The trust equation, what it is, and then go, you should listen to that episode as a follow-up. The trust equation, it takes this myth, or the mystical idea around what is trust, right? This idea of a trust recession, which I said is absolute BS here, but let's break it down. I want you thinking about, in this book, Charles and Andrea, like they talk about how the trust equation is literally an equation. And the equation is what defines trustworthiness.

This is really, really important right now. you to pay attention because we're in this world right now, right? Where I've talked about people are consuming information differently. And especially right now with AI, a question that hasn't been asked at this level is being asked right now. And it's whether or not I believe this person is being one, honest, or two, is really like...

I guess trustworthy, right? Do I believe that what they're saying is true? Do they believe that this is actually theirs? Like there is this, do I believe it energy that with AI, especially the advancements of AI has really accelerated this conversation, right? Same question is around trust, but it's really intensified because the, I'm doing this like thing with my fingers right now, this intangible, there's this intangible nature of trust that's now we have something to blame it on.

It's not just about authenticity, right? Where we feel like people are being fake or we feel like people are not being themselves, they're polished too much. No, no, now we actually have a demon that we can assign it to. In authenticity, that was a hard word, we can now tie it to, AI, right? AI, it's too much AI. Like, can you just talk, right? Anyways, we can go off on all these tangents on this because I have very passionate feelings around.

I AI is incredible when placed appropriately in your thought leadership business. We'll have some follow up conversations on that here soon. But I want to come back to the trust equation because I really want you thinking about how you are building and maintaining integrity with your audience, building and maintaining your trustworthiness with your audience. This is what I would be doubling down if I wanted to make more sales in my business, which I do, so I am. And I want you to do the same for you too.

So the trust equation is this, trustworthiness is credibility plus reliability plus intimacy. Those three things divided by self-orientation. Let's talk about those four factors. So credibility, do I believe this person actually knows what they're talking about? Do I believe that this person has experienced it? Credibility we talk a lot about in our space, establishing credibility. And this is something that you want to make sure that you get really good at.

at establishing your credibility with your audience. Most people think that they have to be like for credibility, we have to like, here's all the things I've done to earn the right to tell you what I'm about to tell you. That's not the best way to build credibility that actually makes people feel very skeptical because it sounds like you're trying too hard to prove yourself. A lot of times credibility comes out in sophistication in what you're talking about. And notice by sophistication does not equal complexity. Sophistication should pair with simplicity. That's a lot of words. Let me describe what I mean by that.

When we're talking about our stuff, a really good, credible, smart, great expert knows how to distill shit down to really simple ways to consume it. They use frameworks, they use metaphors, they bottom line it and make things very, very simple. But simplicity does not mean they dumb it down. They keep the nuance of sophistication.

And when you use sophistication, and what I mean by sophistication is even using examples of the exact thoughts that your person is having or a very specific example that someone might be facing this challenge in, that's sophistication. It's giving very textural language that someone would go, she wouldn't know that unless she's lived it before. Right? You feel that, right? And they might not be consciously thinking that, but there's a subtext that's happening, right? When you describe something and you're like, my gosh, she's in my head, she knows me.

that creates credibility, unlike you saying, I have a degree from Harvard. That doesn't really, I mean, there are probably murderers that went to Harvard. that's a terrible example. But like the stats or the credentials that you have or the jobs that you've had in the past, those, like, this is not the nineties. You're not getting an employee job at Microsoft here. It's not about your resume that does not build trust and credibility with your audience.

Credibility is that you understand their world, you have lived experience, you have done these things before. Credibility. So we need to start thinking about how do we demonstrate more credibility through the way that we communicate and through our presence. That's number one, credibility. Number two, reliability. So reliability, let me just make sure here because I am now having a panic attack. Am I getting the R wrong? Equation.

I think I have this right. Yeah, it is reliability. Okay. So when it comes to reliability is essentially is, there congruency between what you say and what you do? Like, are you reliable? Do you do what you say you're going to do? And this doesn't mean like, I'm going to send you the email on Friday and then don't. I mean that yes, in your personal life, but when it comes to a business, right, let's say, let's say for example, a business, it's very real for me. learned this lesson last year. A business is like your voice is your best brand asset.

This is me. This is me, right? Talking about like the way that you communicate matters, like your voice, blah, blah, be authentic, know, rah, rah, all the things that I say. But then let's say this business uses AI to write their weekly newsletter. Let's say that the emails are just fine, right? They work, but they don't really feel like the founder. They don't really have a really unique, powerful voice. They've lost that like,

They've lost a little something, right? That's what happened to me a year ago, right? When you, more than a year ago, when you go back on the podcast, if you listen to the episode where I say, your brain, your brain wants its job back, we can go, link it on there. Listen to that one. Cause I talk about the creative atrophy that happened when I was trying to do what everyone was doing to be efficient, right? Cause I only had so many hours in a day with my baby at home. So I tried to use an AI to save some time, but at the sacrifice,

of my own voice. So coming back to reliability, if you say your brand stands for one thing, but then the actions you're taking are the opposite of that. So for me, authenticity and leaning into the power of your voice and you are a thought leader. Yet if I used AI to generate my content, no, not edit or amplify my content. So for example, a proper use of AI would be taking this podcast.

running the transcripts and having it reflect back to me and say, hey, use this stuff from that podcast for your social media. could write the podcast email. It could write the promotional stuff for it, right? Those things are fine, but the actual message is coming from me. If I didn't do that, it'd be a lack of congruency. And that to me is a version of reliability. You have to have that integrity between your word and your actions. And audiences are noticing this. And I think this is something that's coming up a lot is the...

reliable? Are we showing up? Right? Is it are you entering someone's inbox every single week? Are you doing it consistent? Are you ghosting? I struggled with ghosting over the last couple years. Hell, this podcast went on a ghosting hiatus. The other thing, let's see, are you going dark on social media? Guilty. I went I go dark on social media sometimes. But what we have to start thinking about is all these things collectively create trustworthiness with our audience. There isn't one magic formula that says you have to do X, Y, and Z each week.

But if we look at credibility paired with reliability, okay, now we start developing this trustworthiness with our audience. So for me, I've always had credibility, but reliability, my reliability has gone down over the last 18 months as I've tried to figure out my footing with a baby at home as I talked about before last week.

So for me, I'm really working on, okay, what does reliability look like in this season? Me showing up for my podcast, I've been really damn good with my newsletter this year. Like I've been loving the newsletter this year. Like showing up with a message, leaving people better than they found them. Okay, I'm building back up my reliability. Okay, then the last one at the top of the equation, intimacy. Now, intimacy, this one is a really interesting thing. I'm gonna read you what the definition online says. Intimacy actually comes down to, well, let me actually summarize real quick.

Credibility, that's around the words that you use. The reliability to make it clear is around the actions, as I was just describing. Intimacy is around safety. I'm gonna say that again. Intimacy is around safety. It's that sense of security, empathy, and emotional safety a person feels sharing information with you. This right here, I think this is going, like this is what's missing right now for a lot of people, especially those who are relying too much on AI.

What's happening is our audience is not feeling connected to us. They're not talking back. If you're using so much AI, it's not coming from you. It feels like a template, like a template or a process. It should never feel like it. Side tangent. I, say your side note, here we go. Back when I was working a lot with directly with an audiologist, you may or may not know this, the story of this background, but I used to,

teach audiologists how to sell hearing aids. Like quite literally one of my classes, me and my team, right, we would teach them how to do a hearing aid evaluation. And essentially this is a new patient coming into a practice, right, who's struggling at some way with their hearing and they wanna get a hearing test and figure out if hearing aids might be a solution for them. I have been this patient on the receiving end, right? But we had a very specific process that we followed. In fact, it was a four step process. And we even had this, we called a guidebook.

that the audiologist would go through with their patient through the appointment. Now when we would first work with new to us audiologists, maybe they had an established practice, but they were coming in, they wanted to learn this proven best practice process so they could be more effective at helping patients. And especially as they were hiring more audiologists or hearing aid dispensers on their staff, they wanted to have a consistent process they could use so they can train and develop and grow their practice. So one of the

biggest push backs of objectives, objections that I would get when the audiologist would come to our class is, I don't do it that way. This feels very sterile. This like, I do it this way, right? I prefer just to have an organic conversation and really connect with people. And it would really resist. And what we would always talk about is one, we talk about how this process like,

it helps you get to your goal, right? It's been proven best practices across, right? However many clinics are using this, it works really well, but when applied well, it should not feel like a clunky process and we're gonna practice it out so it feels second nature. And what we would do is we would role play. We'd literally get out these books and eventually it became a technology tool that we had on a computer and it was touchscreen and we would click through. But what would happen is I'm gonna pretend I have a book here now with me.

We would open up this book and we would literally sit at these banquet tables at hotels and we would role play. Hey, Mr. Mr. Smith, welcome to ABC practice. What brings you in here today? Practice, right? And we would have this all literally scripted to a T so a brand new person to our world could role play with us. And I can tell you hands down, it was awkward as all hell. And it was because the process is going to sound scripted because they've never done it before. So of course it's going to be scripted. And we would talk about follow the script, follow the script.

trust the process. But over time, what would happen is the more that you practice it, and then the more that you applied it, the more you were able to make it your own. Of course, it might sound a little clunky for a couple weeks, even a couple months. And the goal was you shouldn't start changing things around until you've mastered the process, and then you can start making it your own. But what would happen is when I would go out to practices and shadow doctors, I would see the process.

But what I would hear is it wouldn't feel like a process. You know I'm saying here? Like the moment someone feels like they're being put through a process, we resist it. But if the process guides us into the transformation we want, the process helps us. We love a process. Think about this for a second. Have you ever gotten a DM where someone asks you, hey, how long have you been in the XYZ industry? Or hey,

What motivated you to become a coach? And you're like, I could smell your bullshit a mile away. I'm not answering your stupid question because I don't want you to pitch slap me. Right? We can feel when we're being sold to by the inauthentic stupid freaking questions, the DM scripts, similar thing. If we're like on a webinar and we start hearing them use Russell Brunson language, that's like from a classic webinar. We're like, have two choices to either.

be alone and go die by yourself or go the right way, which is my program, right? We're like, ugh, it feels stupid because we know we're smart people. We know that there's more than two options. When the process feels like the process, we resist it. But when a process works really well, whew, it feels like a breath of fresh air. Think about going to Starbucks. You go to Starbucks because they have a process. You know that what's ever going to serve up on the bar is going to taste like it tastes at every other location you go to. And if it doesn't, you can be like, hello.

this coffee is scorched or even I do that because I worked at Starbucks. So I know when milk burns, it tastes nasty and I'm going to send it back. Side note, did you know most people don't send their food back? Get a spine. It's okay. You can, you can send your food back if it's not, if it's not right, right? Don't be a jerk about it, but send your food back. Get your damn coffee. You paid $6 for it. So, but the idea is we like the, we like knowing what's on the other side. We love a process when it works for us. Why am I bringing this up here? Well, right now,

especially when it comes to AI, this is like, I don't know, I saw somebody commented this is like your panty lines are showing, which I laugh because I'm like, I don't care if your panty lines show, but it's the idea of we can see the AI, it's reeking of AI, so that is making it difficult for many to actually hear your message. And I talk about when you're in an industry like ours, if you're marketing to other marketers, that's very different than if you're in like a consumer.

facing industry where they might not be all uppity up on AI with marketing. But what's happening is a very obvious AI is we're going, oof, stop, like it's just, we can't see past it. Versus the people who are using AI successfully, where they lead with the ideas, they've refined it to their own brand voice and they're using it to amplify their really good shit. Those people, they're making AI work for them.

The process is doing what it's supposed to do, but the problem is people haven't figured out, and this isn't about like disguising that you're using AI. I think you should be very transparent whether or not you're using AI in your content, if somebody asked you, definitely shouldn't lie about it. But the reason why I bring all this up is intimacy. Intimacy. I'm gonna read the thing again. The sense of security, empathy, and emotional safety a person feels in sharing information with you.

When you think about trustworthiness in your audience, does your audience feel that you're being fully genuine? Do they feel like you're being real? Do they feel like you care that you're actually sharing from the heart? And do they feel reciprocal with that? Do they feel like they can then open up with you? I think this intimacy component, there is a huge opportunity for us to build a lot more connection with our audience.

and stop trying to act like these massive businesses and speak to so many people at a time and start talking to your one person. Be willing to reply to the emails, write to that one person, send the DM, get on the call, talk to people, be human, create that intimacy, have empathy for your people, don't shit on them for making mistakes in your business and make them feel wrong for it.

Help them understand why they're in the problem. Help them understand how they got to that thinking and don't shit on them for it, but show them it perfectly makes sense why you think this because other people are teaching that. But here's how we're going to do it differently to help you get to X, and Z. Don't apply shame and guilt on your audience. Empower them, have empathy and support people in their journey. And I think you'll feel a heck of a lot better about selling. So these three things together, they're just half the trust equation.

Right? Our words and credibility, our actions and reliability, and then our empathy, the safety we create in our audience, that's half of the equation, those three things together. The other half, and this is what I think is really important, and you're gonna see this between the difference between probably an influencer and a change maker, whatever we wanna call it in that contrast, is that dividing line, self-orientation. Where is the orientation of the message? Where is your focused?

When it's me, me, me, me, me, me focused, what do I get? How does this benefit me? How am gonna sell out my offers? How am I gonna make my program? How am I gonna reduce my time? How am gonna have my efficiency? How am I gonna get better clients? Me, me, me, me. That self-orientation, the higher the self-orientation, the lower your trustworthiness. People can smell that a mile away. And I'm sure you've been in that situation where like, there's this person, just, when I don't feel like they get me.

Maybe they're super credible, super reliable, maybe the intimacy is okay, but you just really feel at end of the day they're in it for themselves, they're in it for their own money, their self-orientation is high. It's cutting down their trustworthiness for you. Versus the opposite, the lower the self-orientation, and notice this doesn't mean that there's no, obviously we're business owners, so we all have to have our self-interest at heart here, but when you are able to really think about who you're talking to,

And the fact that you're doing this to serve other people, when you're making it about the people that you serve, the problems that they're having, the support that you can give them, when you shift that and start speaking to their world, their trust goes up because they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel understood, they feel valued. And the most beautiful part about all of this is there's congruency, right? You're not just saying this shit to make a sale.

No, because that would be felt in the self-orientation. You're doing this because you truly care about the outcomes. So all this to say connecting to last week's episode, if you want to generate more sales, if you want to see your business get ahead, one, you are going to need to do some work here. You're going to need to work it girl. You're going to need to really get in the position and say, what do I need to work on? That like, what do I need to focus on? What is distracting me in my business versus what is fueling me forward?

That's number one. But number two, I really would recognize where is your trustworthiness right now as a brand, not as a person, as a brand, right? And as a personal brand, really got to own this. But in how you're showing up in your business, what is your trustworthiness? How are you doing with your words? Are your words credible? Are your actions reliable?

together are they creating a sense of safety and your intimacy with your audience? And where at the end of the day is your orientation? When you choose to show up, when you create a piece of content, when you write on threads, when you on a podcast interview, are you making it about you and your knowledge and what you know and what you've experienced? Or are you translating that into things that'll help the audience or helping them feel?

less alone in their struggle? Are you helping normalize the pain that they're going through and showing them why they're in the pain, helping them get out of the pain? Are we empowering them by helping them see things in a different perspective and then igniting their asses into action? That is our role as thought leaders. We are leading people's thoughts. And in order to do this, we have to be more intentional in how we show up. That is the name of the game here. And that's what we're gonna dig into a lot more here on the show.

So let me leave you with this. I gave you two homework assignments today. Number one, I want you to do an audit around what are you consuming right now? And is it driving you more to drainer, complainer, whiner thinking, making you feel ugh all the time? Or are you noticing more expansive? Get super clear around who you follow, who you're letting in your ear holes to influence you, who you're letting in your inbox. If you jive with the kind of thinking and the real talk weirdness that I bring to the party,

please, please, please DM me newsletter on Instagram and I will get you on my very refreshingly real newsletter each week. This past week, I shared 11 questions that my business coach asked me to help me get ridiculously like clear on what I was creating restrictions on in my business. I will be happy to forward you that newsletter so you can get started on it. So just DM me newsletter on Instagram. I'll get that for you. But whoever you're listening to, make sure how you feel.

After you hang out with them, it you feel expansive. It makes you feel excited about the future. And if you don't, that's the wrong person for where you're going, babe. Like you really got to drill down and start deleting shit out of your life that is not helping you get to where you want to go. That's number one. That's the audit. Number two, I want you to work on building your trust worthiness. Go listen to the episode with Andrea. I think you'll really love that. Just know it's a few years old, so there might be some contextual things around the pandemic. So let's just have a laugh about that. But credibility, the words you speak.

And remember, I can help you with those things. So if that's something that need to work on is aligning your words and your actions a bit more, DM me on Instagram and let's talk about what that looks like, whether that's us working together one-on-one or, spoiler, I have a new program coming out called The Refinery that is freaking going to be so killer. I'm so excited about it. I'll talk more about it But if you wanna get on the wait list or just learn more about how to work together, let me know, but credibility.

Reliability your actions, start showing up in alignment, showing up as the kind of person that you would wanna follow, be your own inspiration. Number three, start creating intimacy, safety with your audience. Start having the empathy, creating the space, being more authentic, all these things. Think about what makes you trust someone. Start exhibiting that for yourself. And most importantly, make sure your self-orientation is always about your audience. Yes, talk about you, of course. Yes, use your stories. Yes, talk about your wins. Yes, talk about your experience.

Yes, talk about cool stories from your life and your clients and all those great things. Teach, but ensure that there is a payoff for the audience. the end of the day, how is this serving the person in front of you? Even if it's a mindset shift, even if it's just a connection between the three of even if it's a reminder for how they should show up or how they could think about a topic, the lesson doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes the lesson is just leaving them better than you found them. That's what this all comes back to.

So I don't know about you, but I'm very excited about the next chapter of where our businesses are going. I know I hyped this up at the end of last week's episode, but I'm gonna do this every fricking episode, is I want you looking forward to the future. I want you thinking about what an incredible time we are in right now. We have this such a good opportunity to build trust with the right people and come out on top. And by on top, I mean living the kind of life and business that we couldn't even dreamed of 10 years ago.

This is what we're creating, we have to make sure that our thinking is right, our community that we're surrounding ourselves in is right, that we are focused on building conversations and relationships with integrity and trust. And it's not a like, like we talked about today, it's not this elusive feeling. There's actually a predictable equation for it. So start asking better questions.

Start challenging how your own thoughts are showing up in your business. Start challenging where your own limiting beliefs are holding you back or maybe leaning you into that drainer and complainer. And don't allow yourself to then whine and complain about your own shit. Start saying, what does it look like for me to be more expansive? How can I step into more of a thought leader role? How can I bring the best version of me into my business?

And by asking more expansive questions, you're gonna start experiencing more expansiveness in your business and life. With that, I'll leave you to it. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Hint of Hustle. I'll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye, friend.