Today I'm joined by the FABULOUS Aleasha Bahr. We're talking about where the "ick factor" comes from and what most people get horribly wrong about selling (which inadvertently adds the "ick"). We'll show you how to rethink your relationship with sales - a critical step to building a successful business. This one is like a whole high-level sales training packed into 40 minutes... listen now!
Can't-Miss Moments:
Aleasha's bio:
Aleasha is a woman in a male dominated industry who is calling out the common lies perpetuated in sales. Primarily, the lie that you have to do things that feel “weird” to win sales and experience hundreds of reps and rejections before you can be “good” at sales.
The truth is, nothing is one size fits all - especially not something as dynamic and unpredictable as sales.
She loves giving people a refreshing alternative - the Matchmakers Sales Method - Because if it’s a fit, it’s a fact and there’s no “selling” involved. And enjoys giving people the permission to lean into THEIR personal strengths instead of acting like someone else. In her experience, it ALWAYS sells more!
She's been featured on Rocky Mountain Marketing Podcast, Sales Game Changers, Business Innovators Radio and Outside Sales Talk.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Today I'm joined by the FABULOUS Aleasha Bahr. We're talking about where the "ick factor" comes from and what most people get horribly wrong about selling (which inadvertently adds the "ick"). We'll show you how to rethink your relationship with sales - a critical step to building a successful business. This one is like a whole high-level sales training packed into 40 minutes... listen now!
Can't-Miss Moments:
Aleasha's bio:
Aleasha is a woman in a male dominated industry who is calling out the common lies perpetuated in sales. Primarily, the lie that you have to do things that feel “weird” to win sales and experience hundreds of reps and rejections before you can be “good” at sales.
The truth is, nothing is one size fits all - especially not something as dynamic and unpredictable as sales.
She loves giving people a refreshing alternative - the Matchmakers Sales Method - Because if it’s a fit, it’s a fact and there’s no “selling” involved. And enjoys giving people the permission to lean into THEIR personal strengths instead of acting like someone else. In her experience, it ALWAYS sells more!
She's been featured on Rocky Mountain Marketing Podcast, Sales Game Changers, Business Innovators Radio and Outside Sales Talk.
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hey and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, alicia Barr. Say hi, hi. It was so hard for me to actually hit record because we were just catching up talking about podcasting on the road. For those of you watching the video or not watching the video, I am clearly shooting from a hotel and that was a whole fun conversation about the setup on that. But enough about podcasting on the road. Tell us a little bit about your business.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, so I am a sales expert and I show, done for you service providers how to convert up to 80% of their sales meetings by giving them the words and the structure and strategy they need to navigate a sales conversation comfortably, without pain or pressure or pitching or pretending to be somebody else it's all custom.
Angie Colee:I love that Because I think and I think I speak for a lot of entrepreneurs that struggled with sales that it always felt pushy or deeply tied to your identity, in a way that, like if they said no, it feels like deep personal oh my God, I'm being rejected as a person versus the service is not right for me, or the offer wasn't right for me. So I love that you have made this your focus and are really helping people to get comfortable with it.
Aleasha Bahr:Thank you for saying that. I feel the same way. People over complicate sales. Most people are actually very, very good at it, and then sales training tells you no, don't follow your intuition. Do this really uncomfortable thing, even though your body screaming not to?
Angie Colee:It sounds interesting. Tell me a little bit more about it. Most people are actually really good at sales. I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that before.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah well, sales is just a conversation. So if you think about, like, have you ever sold your friend on going into a concert with you? Absolutely yeah. Or like a restaurant, or, you know, getting the friends to rally around a certain place that you want to go, or that most people are very natural at it, the difference is that they know what the motivations are in those situations for the person across from them so they can easily customize the pitch to that person. They know, oh, you know, bill has a wife, so he and kids, so I'm going to sell the baseball game as a way to get some peace and quiet. Versus someone who's single. You're going to say, oh well, let's go get a beer and mingle with some single people. So the difference is in a sales conversation you have to ask questions to know what's important to the other person.
Angie Colee:I don't like that because I, whenever I'm working with coaching clients, that's one thing that seems to come up. There's just the nerves of what, what kind of package do I put together, what kind of offer do I put together? And usually it winds up that I asked them several questions they don't have the answer to, and I said so. It sounds like a lot of the hesitation and the anxiety you are facing around putting together the right packages because you don't know enough to make a recommendation. Is that accurate? And they're like, now that you're asking me the questions yeah, I don't really know what to recommend.
Angie Colee:My experience has been similar to yours. I really struggled with sales when I thought I had to read people's minds and be that kind of like expert that comes in and says I'm going to show you what you don't even know. You don't know. Yeah, make all of these recommendations that are right on point. When I just started listening to people and then repeating back. So what I hear is you're really struggling with your email. Here are a couple of ways that I can help with the email. Does either any of those sound like we're hitting the mark? And people were like yeah, actually that first one was wait, tell me more about that. And it just became a conversation. I kind of accidentally stumbled on that.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, well, that's great. I mean, it really is just natural. Like in it's, the offer is the same, but how you're positioning it is different.
Angie Colee:I think that makes it a lot less complicated to, because there's one program that I've been a coach in for a while where I'm usually providing feedback on people's offers, and these are creative service providers and they're coming up with like an intro offer, a trial run offer, and then a couple of different back end offers that they could do with particular clients that they want to work with. And the most common problem that I run into is that they have like 20 different services and offers that they want to to focus on and I'm like do you even remember all of those service offices? Do you expect me to remember all of them? We're going to pare it down. You could do everything, but you got to start with just a couple of things, just a few.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, totally you. There are things people often feel like they have to do stuff to. You don't have to do anything, you can just do the things that you like to do.
Angie Colee:That one is a big one, like everybody listening. Take that down and then put it on a mug, tattoo it on your forehead. I don't. You don't have to offer anything, especially just because someone asked. No matter how much you love them, no matter how long you have worked with them, no matter how much money they offer to throw at you I mean, that might be a little bit tempting. You could bring in somebody else to outsource that too, but you don't have to offer any service that you don't want to. I joked. It's not even entirely a joke, but I like to treat everything with a sense of humor because that's just my personality.
Angie Colee:For the longest time, I used to tell people I don't push buttons, I just a copywriter. That's all you want me to do. Trust me, if you get me anywhere near the back end. Even in all innocence, no matter how intuitive and how many tutorials I watch, I somehow find the red button that messes it all up, and I don't want to do that to you. So let's, let's have me in the sandbox that I'm good at playing in. That is the strategy, that is the copy, that is the overall email direction. We need somebody that's techie in here doing the segmenting and the tagging and the test sends and things like that. And it was never a problem when I started treating it with a sense of humor like that and saying that you don't, you don't want me to red button your, your email marketing, trust me.
Aleasha Bahr:Well, also it's like yeah, just tell someone that's not my zone of genius. So I got. I have some resources for you, I think.
Aleasha Bahr:I'll point you to this person. I like that, yeah. So, especially with the creative services you were talking about, those people are often like, well, I guess that I'll do website design and, you know, low profile and graphic design for social media, and then I'll do social media posting, and then I did and it's like there's they actually just love branding and it's like you don't have to do those things, you just point them to social media marketing agency for that. And it's crazy. They don't want someone that that's not their zone of genius doing that.
Angie Colee:Most, most rational people do not want somebody that is working outside of their zone of genius. There are some folks that because we're in business with humans and humans going to human, they don't always do things that make sense. We don't always do things that make sense, so you will get somebody that's like I just really want a one stop shop for that, and that's usually when I go. That's that sounds like an agency and that can be a pretty spendy investment. But here are a good couple ones that I know. I'm happy to make an introduction if you'd like something like that. But basically saying without saying, I'm not going to offer that service to you and I'm not going to sell all my time to you doing things that I'm not good at doing.
Aleasha Bahr:No, with love. Yeah, I mean, I'm just like that's not me. So you know I can point you somewhere else. I do want to like preface that a lot of times if somebody does all of it, it's not all going to be quality, just say, however, do whatever is in your best interest.
Angie Colee:Yep, you got to do what you got to do and that you know how did you? How did you get into sales? Because that does seem like an interesting profession to me to like specialize in helping people get better at sales.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, yeah Well, basically I, kind of accidentally, was good at sales. I was always natural at sales, right and it turns out that the thing that people really want is for you to just give a shit. So that's really easy, right, and I really cared about people and they could pick up on that, and so people who are natural at sales never have to take any sales training and they never have to define what they do. So when somebody asks them, how are you so good at sales? They're like, well, I don't really sell. And it's like well, what the hell does that mean? Nobody can imitate that. So I have put it into words and it's about fitting instead of selling, and they tell someone when it's not a fit, and that is what makes them say that they're not selling. So you can say actually, you don't need to buy that thing. That's not gonna help you a lot.
Aleasha Bahr:What you really need to focus on is this thing and that transparency and trust does so much for the sale because you just actually care about the other person. And I had a marketing agency after I got out of corporate and then there it's real hard. When you have overhead people, it's difficult to scale. Also, I missed sales and I realized that there was really bad sales training out there and I knew a lot of experts that were wonderful at what they did and did not know how to share that with people and it was like tragic so and the things that they were being told to do.
Aleasha Bahr:And I am still pretty baffled at how people are persuaded by this messaging. But like it's all very aggressive sales strategies that are taught and these people are making shillows of money telling people this is how they need to sell and it's extremely complicated a lot of time too. Like sometimes it's like you need to have this tone when you say this word and this tone and it's like hey, why don't you just focus on your intention behind what you're saying? And your tone is naturally going to follow. Like you're asking empathy. Like I can't imagine how inauthentic conversation would feel if the person is like when I say this sentence, I have to pretend like my tone is this yeah.
Angie Colee:Yeah, I feel like that's going to, you know, like a show, a play or a rock show, where you can tell somebody's really in their head thinking about what they're doing, what they're doing as they're doing it. You can tell that there's a separation between them and you, as they're like over analyzing everything that's going on in their head. That's what I got wrong about musical performance. For a long time I was constantly thinking about what I was doing. When I stopped that and deliberately was like Nope, back down into the body, from the head back in the body. We're going to feel the music, we're going to see whatever comes up, including forgetting the words, which I've done plenty of times before. That was always when people told me I don't know what you had tonight, like what you drank, what you did, but that was just a magical performance in a flick. Stop thinking about it and just did it being present.
Aleasha Bahr:It's all about being present. So when you know, when I saw all these aggressive sales strategies? They create horrible buyer experiences, by the way, and it's also very unpleasant for the seller. Neither people are having a good time and it works for a very small percentage of the population. Basically, aggressive men is all it works for. Everyone else feels really like they're putting on some strange costume that doesn't fit quite right. So and then they feel bad that it doesn't work for them. So there's just like shaming or gaslighting that happens, and a lot of people are like oh my God, it's me, I'm bad at sales, I'm terrible at sales. And it's like no, you're terrible at selling like an aggressive, high pressure dude, like that's a good thing, You're probably going to sell once you lean into who you are as a person.
Aleasha Bahr:You're going to outsell that guy so much.
Angie Colee:Oh, absolutely that's my frustration with the one trick ponies too. A lot of the folks that I've worked with before have expressed frustration, because I worked in marketing a lot and it's like what's the prospecting method that's going to get me business? And I said I got bad news for you. The reason that you've got so many people out there all teaching their one thing is because all of those things work. They just found the one that works best for them. So they think that that's the thing there. That's their one trick pony, right. So you unfortunately have to go out there and try all the things and find out what works for you, and there's going to be a learning curve and you're going to feel dumb from time to time or you're going to feel uncomfortable from time to time.
Angie Colee:I told this story last week on a different podcast where I was like I didn't know what I didn't know about copywriting and the book that I read, the Welfed Writer, had all kinds of prospecting methods in it. And that's how I found myself at 5am because I was ashamed dropping little, home printed, you know, waiting for one line at a time to eke out on my printer, home printed flyers on unsuspecting business owners, and I was going out at 5am because I did not want anybody to be present there and catch me in my walk of shame, leaving my book. Suffice it to say that's the only time I did that, because I just didn't like that sensation enough and I was like and I didn't get any calls from it and I was like all right, cool, checking that one off the list. We're not doing that anymore.
Aleasha Bahr:That's such a great story and a very realistic portrait of what it looks like, and that is what bothers me about solutions that are widely promoted. They're like this is what's going to work, and I don't think that it did that make somebody an expert. If you have one strategy, exactly, yeah, a lot of people can do something for themselves. Very few people can do something to get the same result for somebody else, and I think that's the difference between an expert and someone who's just not, and you should be able to customize it to the person.
Angie Colee:If you're an expert, which should be adaptable whatever you can come up with to do. And I used to tell, or I still tell, coaching students that all the time when they're talking about getting business be like, you need to pay attention to what lights you up and what drains your energy, because if anything that you're trying to do falls into that energy drain camp, we need to just eliminate it. We need to focus on the stuff that you actually like doing. That is how you're going to bring in the business. I liked it. We talked about why I'm travel podcasting because I'm about to go to this conference called the Badass Business Summit, totally appropriate for my personality. This is where I like to do business. I like to just get in conversations with people and talk about their business and get all excited and maybe have a couple of drinks and do karaoke. But that's my style and that's how it works for me.
Aleasha Bahr:I love that so much the permission to do whatever works for you, and since we're all in business for ourselves, we get to do whatever the hell we want. And let's take advantage of that and not let somebody who preaches that this is the only way to do something make you feel pressured to do something that does not align with you. You get to make the calls, you get to create whatever you want. You get to take a nap in the middle of the day.
Angie Colee:Absolutely Naps are my favorites. They're the best. They really help me.
Aleasha Bahr:And you can guarantee.
Angie Colee:If I disappear from a meeting or a conference, that is where I am. I am taking a nap. It makes me higher quality, it makes me so much easier to deal with, and I remember one of my first business meetings, sitting at a bar with a bunch of colleagues playing a totally inappropriate game, having totally not business conversation over a couple of drinks and having the conscious thought of this is business. I like this. This is way different than what I thought when it was like sitting in a meeting in my suit and just trying to get through this and so I can say whatever I need to say. No, you can build a business around your own particular strings. Not everybody's going to like hanging out at a bar. That's fine. There are lots of different ways that. There's a reason why the golf course business became a trope right People doing business over golf yeah, just be a person and have human conversations. It's great.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, I mean, when I was at corporate I would work with clients who had very large national companies, like the owners of them, and they're just like me and you man. They just want to have a good time with the person who gives a shit. That's it, yeah. And they're tired. They're so tired of people showing up formally and like with buzzwords and trying to pretend like they're really smart and sales. They're so over it. They just want somebody to come in and be real, no matter how rich they are or how big their company is or whatever.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, I had another guest on for one episode where she talked about how she broke into being a ghost writer, like writing business books for established leaders. And it started in a similar way. It was a client that she already liked working with. She had helped him on a number of other writing projects. And he said do you do books? And she came back to him and she said I've never done it before, but here's what I could do. And if you want to try with me, I can try. But basically, came at it from that place. I like working with you. I'm going to be honest, I've never done that. I'd be willing to try it with you if you're willing to give me the leeway to potentially try and fail. Let's see what we can do together. And that's how she completely pivoted and changed her business and became a professional ghost writer full-time. Because just that connection, just that conversation and how hard was that sale right there Like yeah, I could do it. I think I could figure that out. Do you want to try?
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, that's the thing transparency and trust. It's like just I want to do what's best for you, so if you can't afford to have me being perfect, I want to let you know I'm not going to be perfect. Yes.
Angie Colee:And there's a market for everybody, wherever they're at. I think that was my biggest frustration when I was training a lot more copywriters is that everybody came into the industry thinking that they had to be a me, that they had to be a control beater or that they had to be like the top of the line, Otherwise no one would ever want to hire them. And I'm like no, there's somebody for everybody. There might be a beginner business owner that could use a beginner copywriter. There might be a established business owner, but they're only just carving out a marketing budget so they can only afford someone brand new. There might be a business who wants to bring in someone brand new so that they can invest a lot in training them and then keep them for a long time and grow as the business grows. So if there's a lot of different reasons why somebody wouldn't need top of the line, the most expensive talent out there, so stop feeling like you're falling short. That's just the story you've got happening in between your own ears. You're good enough as you are.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah and oh my gosh, I was talking to someone the other day this reminds me of it who was saying a lot of people feel like they need to charge a whole bunch from the beginning and then they're feeling really not confident because they've never delivered and gotten someone a result. But they've been told they're just supposed to charge Like they have. And I'm like no, you can just charge with what you're comfortable with and let the person know Similar to what you said that your ghostwriter friend did, like hey, this is one of my first goes at it. All that to say you're going to get an incentivized price because of it and probably more access to me than other people will have. Moving forward, and it won't be perfect, I'll need your feedback to make it a really good service and as long as you're cool with that, let's roll and then just afterwards ask them what would you have paid?
Angie Colee:Yeah, ooh, I like that. What would you have paid for that? And you're going to get some usable data from questions like that and some not usable data from questions like that, right, because not everybody knows what things cost or what it takes to produce especially creative work, since it's so cerebral. But I love that you picked up on one of my favorite things, which is turning a perceived weakness into a strength and going all right. I used to tell people you should charge your worth right. What empty words. What the hell does that even mean? Charge your worth right If you're feeling low? How does that impact your worth right? Oh, yeah, but I think it's a different thing entirely to charge a price that you're comfortable with and then close the sale and have to deliver the business and then learn what you can learn from that. So I would tell people I think that you're really undercharging with the service that you're offering. That said, I also know that if you don't feel comfortable saying that number, you're just not going to say it. So if you must start here, that's great. Don't stay here. Limited to the first three people. Talk about it.
Angie Colee:Exactly like Alicia said, this is an introductory offer. This is a new service that I'm offering. So I've got this special deal for the first three people that I do this service with, and what I need in return is X, y, z, Just to set the expectation up front and don't stay there and then learn what you can learn. I know that my first $2,500 sales page that I did I was over the moon at the time because that was the most I'd ever charged for a single project in my life, and after I did that I went. I should have charged a quadruple that because that was so much more work than I thought it was going to be. But I never would have known that if I hadn't charged it and hadn't done the work.
Aleasha Bahr:And so next time you were able to confidently be like uh no, this is how much it's worth, absolutely.
Angie Colee:Absolutely.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, you gradually like you increase. I'm all about the gradual increase in the baby steps and people feel so much pressure to be perfect from the beginning and to charge a bunch from the beginning, and it's really just about evolving and being honest with someone. Everybody just wants honesty.
Angie Colee:Yes, you don't have to be perfect and like, let's just go ahead and completely get this mistaken notion out of your head that you're going to get through business. Like, if you come up with a perfect plan that you're somehow going to get through business unscathed, you're never going to embarrass yourself, you're never going to make a mistake, you're never going to upset a client, you're never going to upset yourself or your family, like it's not going to happen. But trust yourself that once you get into those situations, that you can get out and you can figure it out, as long as you are focused on the relationships and not the tactics.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, I mean, it's so funny. Sometimes I think about how we give ourselves, you know, a pretty significant timeline to learn a sport or an instrument or a language and then, in knowing that we're going to fail and we're going to look stupid and with business, we're like oh my god, it's been six weeks why don't?
Angie Colee:I have an MBA already in six weeks.
Aleasha Bahr:Like, yeah, you would never expect that right From an MBA, but with business, why haven't I gotten my first $10,000 or $20,000 and nobody wants me.
Angie Colee:And man, you're just starting out Like you've got to take steps, take steps, temper the expectations and yes, there are some, like you know, random viral TikToks and things like that people that find themselves in $10,000 weeks overnight, but they were also producing content for how long before they went viral and putting out things that didn't land and trying. I mean. The point is that everything that you see for every hockey stick overnight success story most of the rest of them that you're not really paying attention to were all over the map, up and down, several times, backward, forward, all over, until they suddenly took off 10 years in the making that overnight success, yeah.
Aleasha Bahr:I love that quote. I mean, it's just so hard, I mean, and we logically know that, but still put the pressure on ourselves to do it faster. But also like, even if you're employed somewhere, like you're going to have the same embarrassing stuff happen all the time. Like, as humans, we're just. You know it's funny how scared we are of failure, like it's deadly, like you're going to die or you'll be injured in some way, like there's no physical harm at all that comes from it, but deathly afraid To fail.
Angie Colee:That used to be the thing right Before we became the modern society that we are. I don't know if you ever get curious about stupid shit the way that I do, but every once in a while I'll look at a potato and go who decided to eat that? Like, who was the first human being that just went? Hmm, like ground nugget. I'm going to take a bite of that and when you start to think about that and follow that down the rabbit hole, right, that's really fun. There's a lot of stuff out there that looks really weird that we eat pretty regularly, and I'm like who was the first that that one was a high price of failure if you ate the wrong thing back in the day, oh yeah.
Aleasha Bahr:I do think about that. I'm like, how did they, you know, figure? Because I mean you think about like the indigenous tribes that are like, well, you eat this cactus, you know you're going to another universe. And like, like you had to try all these things and see which ones would kill you, which ones would intoxicate you, which ones tasted good, and someone was just a brave soul.
Angie Colee:And there were. There were sacrifices oh man, were there sacrifices? But thankfully it's not like that anymore. You're not really following a blind path and having to figure things out on your own in a vacuum, with no support. There are so many people who have walked the path before you. Alicia has, I have. We're turning around and sending the elevator back down, as one of my mentors said, and that's that's what I love about this. Nobody got anywhere. They are in business without help and anybody who is telling you they got there by themselves is full of shit. Full of it.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, I don't see how, because they at least watched somebody and learned from them, even if they didn't interact with them. They learned from somebody else and imitate it, or something like that.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, absolutely. We all come at business from a different, different lens, different background experience, different life situations. Right, and even people that inherit businesses still have to make mistakes, still have to learn the hard way, even if they've had somebody mentoring them along the way. Once they're on their own and they have to make the decisions, they're going to make the wrong decisions. That's just something we're all going to do Like welcome to the club. You fucked up. We're going to get jackets and go bowling.
Aleasha Bahr:It's a rite of passage. I was telling my friend the other day, like you know, you just are like I think this is the right decision. Oh, no, no, that wasn't it. Okay, wait, I think this is nope, not that one. Okay, and that's just kind of what it looks like. And she was like sounds so simple and easy. When you put it that way and it's like that's really what it is, you have to take the judgment out of it. Like, one of my favorite quotes is there are no failures. You either got the lesson or the result you needed.
Angie Colee:I do love that. I feel like that applies to so many people who are stuck at a certain level too and aren't getting the growth that they want. What lesson are you missing here? Because I feel like you stay in a certain place, repeating a certain pattern, until you've learned what you need to learn to be able to get out of that and to the next level. So I love that. I love that perspective, yeah it's like it's all data.
Aleasha Bahr:right, this is all data Either way, like it doesn't have to work, but I'll know more afterwards. And if you think about someone who's never made any mistakes, do they have anything of value to offer anybody?
Angie Colee:I don't really have any like actual, tangible experience, and failure is such a great teacher. I've constantly told people I mean every time something bad happens to me, yes, I will wallow for a minute and I will feel sorry for myself for a minute and do whatever I need to do to process, and then, usually right after that initial woe, is me feeling my brain goes this is going to make a great story someday.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, I mean. I think that it gives us a lot of context for empathizing with others and being able to help others. Those mistakes are going to make someone else's journey easier. You can talk them through it and that's so valuable.
Angie Colee:Oh yes.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, it's. I mean we can all feel shame about. I always say like everybody's got a reason to be broken, okay, everyone's got fucked up past, or like their parents or their aunts or their sibling or whatever. We all have an excuse to be an asshole. Yes, instead, use it as an excuse to help others avoid that situation. Use it as an excuse to be better than those things. And it already ruined your life for so long. Why let it ruin your life for any longer?
Angie Colee:Right and then like, amplify and go out and ruin other people's lives as a result because of the choices that you make.
Angie Colee:Oh gosh, I love that you brought that up, because that's one of my favorite things to talk people through, too, when I rance about this often says.
Angie Colee:This is probably not the only time any of the listeners have heard me talk about the pitchfork mob, but one of my biggest problems with online business is when you have a support community right, and you are feeling some kind of way about an interaction with a client, you feel like they've done you wrong and you go to the internet group and you ask hey, is this a red flag? What's going on with my client here? And you don't realize that what you've just done is send a call to arms to the pitchfork mob, because you're only giving your side of the story. Usually, when you're already in a state, you're telling yourself that you're asking for perspective and for people to push back on you and to show you what you can't see, but you're not giving them enough context to be able to do so. So what you're really doing is you are signaling a call to all the people who have ever been ripped off by a client which hit it's all of us.
Angie Colee:Yes, and they're coming out of the woodwork to go. That is a red flag there, disrespecting you there, trying to screw you over, and then all of a sudden it has just swirled into this firestorm of everybody's angry and usually I'm the one in those groups that goes All right. Alternative perspective, if you're open to it. Here are a couple of places where I see that there might have been a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. This could be something that you should talk about the client to and, by the way, the only person you're going to get clarity from in a situation like this is the client. None of us are your client. Take it for what it is.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, I mean, I love that framing of it. And then also I'm usually like how can you, what patterns can you spot? So this doesn't happen again. So, is it that they didn't have something in place that you needed and y'all didn't discuss it, or that you didn't manage expectations upfront, or that this person didn't have the right expectations? And you know, there's things you can spot that are like. That's why this went sideways and how I can adjust, moving forward.
Angie Colee:Yeah, I like that Because to me, the conversation isn't about how can I take blame, but how can I find my piece of this, because there's practically no situation, except maybe if I'm a victim of a crime, where I am 0% blameless right and I have to own my piece of that in order to keep this, like we talked about earlier, stuck in the same pattern, to keep this from repeating. So, if you're constantly dealing with clients who don't pay you, what broke in your screening process, in your sales process, in your onboarding or your setup where you keep bringing these people into your world, what's your piece of that right? Because they're not all shitty clients who don't pay. I promise you that.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, no, it's definitely like the difference between a victim mentality and an ownership mentality, and I understand the benefits of being blameless. There are lots of benefits, yeah it's much more comfortable.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, it's much more comfortable. You don't have to do anything, you get to complain. You get sympathy a lot of the times too, which is nice, but I think that the benefits of creating the life you want outweigh the benefits of being a victim. So it's like how can you take control? And like it feels liberating once you realize that you are in control of every aspect of your life. And there are things that happen to us that we in no way created, but we can choose the reaction that we have to them Exactly.
Angie Colee:And I love that. You pointed out earlier that we're all dealing with trauma, that when I'm talking to people about that, remember that when your client ghosts you or they're late on the payment or they're kind of snappy at you on a meeting nine times out of 10, that has nothing to do with you. I'm serious. They had the mother of all bad mornings, I know. Last year when I was in Vegas I had an instance where I woke up in tooth pain, the electricity in my Airbnb was going off and on repairman showed up unexpectedly. My battery's dead, my molars cracked, like everything went wrong. I'm gonna snap at everybody that day just because that's the mood I'm in and it has nothing to do with who they are. But yeah, I mean, if you can give somebody grace for being human and not always getting it right, you can't. Everybody's dealing with their own trauma, exactly like Alicia said.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, it really yeah. I mean, what bothers me a lot is like I have a friend who's married to this guy, right, and he's like got this explosive temper and then says like oh well, it's because my dad this and that. Like come on, man, that's not.
Angie Colee:That's a choice.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, it is a choice. Like what? Okay, so you hated it. So you're just gonna make everyone else experience the experience that you hated? Like it is a choice, you have control over it. You cannot have that reaction. And, yes, there is human grace and it's different when you keep making the same choice.
Angie Colee:Yes, yeah, when you keep making the same choice. That's exactly it. The word is choice. You have made a decision. Whether you've consciously made it or not is irrelevant. You've made a decision and you can choose to be a spectator of your behavior and go. I'm not really proud of that. I can do better and not beat yourself up over it. That's what I love about this. Took me a long time to learn the difference between that too, but like you, can look at yourself critically and own your piece of it like we were talking about it, without it going down into a spiral where I am unworthy, I am unlovable. I am a constant fuck up who will never do better For what you tell yourself, because your brain will make it true.
Aleasha Bahr:Oh yes, that's so true, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, very much the stories, the stories that we have running in the background. There was something that you said oh yeah, if you don't own your story, it'll own you. So a lot of people are hiding the thing that they're like so ashamed and embarrassed of and, like you just say the thing and everyone's like, oh my God, it instantly makes them feel better about whatever their bullshit is.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, that's that perceived weakness into a string. I think we talked about it when I was on your show too, because I call it the elephant in the room strategy.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, that conflict resolution. I don't pretend nothing is wrong.
Angie Colee:I call attention to the thing that I think somebody might be worrying about and I liken it to there being an elephant somewhere in the room. Everybody knows it's there. Everybody is wondering what the hell is that? Why is that? Are we not talking about that? So, if you refuse to address it, people are going are you crazy? Am I crazy? What is happening? Why are we not talking about this?
Angie Colee:And that's when you get to call it out and you get to own the story and go well, yeah, hey, by the way, in case you haven't noticed, there's an elephant over there. We are aware of it. I'm not entirely sure how it got here, but here's the plan for dealing with that. So if we wanna just move into the next room over here, this is where we will be dealing with our particular issues. Right, don't pretend like it's not there.
Angie Colee:And, of course, I don't have any examples that come to mind, but I know that the situation has happened in the past with people that I've coached through business situations. Like, don't pretend like it didn't happen. Oh, like, for instance, there's, you know, like the payment process or misfires and your client gets like triple charged. Don't pretend like nothing happened. Go call attention to it. Don't make excuses for it. Tell them what your plan is for addressing it, thank them for your patience their patience in bringing it to your attention and then just do what you can to solve it instead of going ah, it's not an issue, don't worry about it.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, like really no one cares about your apology, like they just wanna know what you're gonna do about it Exactly. And when you call the thing out loud, when you own the story, like it's so much less bad than whatever you're telling in your head or the other person's creating in their head, because it gets crazy when it's not said out loud.
Angie Colee:Yes. Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm a fan of telling people that I'm a writer for a living. Trust me, whatever I can come up with is about a million times worse than what the actual reality is. So just tell me the truth.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah, and let's deal with it from there, mm-hmm.
Angie Colee:Oh gosh, this has been such a fantastic episode. I think we need to do a part two. We're just gonna have to keep talking about this and helping people become more comfortable with sales. So for now, I'm going to say Alicia, please tell us where we can find out more about your business.
Aleasha Bahr:Yeah. So I would say, go to my podcast. Sales is Not a Dirty Word and I have short episodes about the philosophy behind natural selling, like a natural or the matchmaker sales method that I have and that will give you like a good basis to know if it aligns with you.
Angie Colee:Yeah, that's awesome. I think everybody can benefit from this. I'm gonna make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes so it's so easy for people to go check you out. Also, as I briefly mentioned, I was a guest on that podcast and it is a fabulous, fabulous show, if I do say so myself. So go check out, alicia. Thank you so much for being on the show and looking forward to part two.
Aleasha Bahr:Thank you, angie. This was so great, but it's also a great show.
Angie Colee:We really appreciate all your support. Thank you so much, and I think there are so many great people that I want to appreciate. I'm gonna leave it here. That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose. If you can do it, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcast. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go you.