Optional Thoughts from My 200K Mastermind (Selling in a Crisis Part 2)

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast, where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches. I’m so excited to bring you this Selling in a Crisis podcast series while we are going through the coronavirus pandemic. I really want to provide you and be a source of energy and leadership and focus that keeps you thinking about things that serve you, serving your clients, selling, and making money, because there is no better time to be a life coach. There’s no better time to have the tools that we have and to help people.

And there’s no better time to remember that we get to think whatever we want about a circumstance in the world. So we’re going to talk a lot about selling. I’ve created a whole series of podcasts to keep you focused, but I wanted to immediately share with you thoughts from my 200K mastermind students.

They’re making 100K, 200K, 500K. They have incredible things to share with you. I asked them a simple question. What are your thoughts about selling during a crisis? And what they articulated in the comments blew me away. I loved – I feel so incredibly grateful to be a leader of these coaches and be a leader of this mastermind.

I would be in this mastermind. These clients blow me away. The way that we’re all thinking, the level at which we’re creating is so powerful and I wanted to give you a little bit of that. So I took some of their answers that really touched me and thought would be really useful to you. I’m bringing some of them here to this podcast and I’m going to share them with you now.

Some of the things they touch on I’m going to do actual whole podcast episodes on. They were already in my plan but I just thought this would be a really fun way to give you a burst of wisdom and support and optional thinking during this time all at once, from money-makers, movers and shakers in this industry that are currently making a lot of money, regardless of the circumstances.

Alright, are you ready? Let’s dive in. So Rebecca Webber said, “Many of my clients have way more work now than normal. Even though projects are getting canceled left and right for most of their peers. The feeling of purpose is so strong that they are no longer overthinking. They’re reaching out, making offers, and turning around work faster than ever.”

So good. If we just stop self-focusing on our own suffering, if we stop being perfect, if we just seize this moment to just dive in and be imperfect but in service, everything will shift and we will stay working when others don’t. So important.

My client Elizabeth Salazar says, “Crisis. This word causes us to forget to speak to our people. I’ve been writing down who I serve and who I don’t serve to remind my brain that my clients want to invest and their business is still top of mind, even during quarantine with their families. It’s more important than ever to believe in ourselves, that we have the solution, that people want it, that it’s all our thoughts and that it’s worth the price in any situation.

I think the other part of selling in crisis is always creating a net. I already planned for the worst case. I have significantly less mind management to do because I lived below my means to create a net for my future. I’m also totally okay with losing everything and starting over.”

That is the best thought you could ever have. “I’m totally okay with losing everything and starting over.” This is genuinely how I feel. I believe in my capacity to make money always. I have been in the worst financial situations possible and I have developed a resiliency from that where I’m no longer scared of that.

I also know that my thoughts are what create my feelings. So I can feel secure and comforted and grounded and sufficient no matter what my bank account says. I think this is such an opportunity for everyone to learn right here right now.

Vicky Jaff says, “People that I’m coaching about money scarcity are thinking, ‘No one is spending money right now,’ but that isn’t true. Actually, a lot of people are spending money right now. That is why there is such a shortage in the supermarkets. One client said she bought gym equipment to work out from home because she felt she had to. So it is the same as always. People spend where they see value. The virus is just a circumstance. I think if you’re unsure of the value you have to offer, this exacerbates it, but the underlying issue is exactly the same.”

Yes. So you have to remember this; when you’re selling what you’re offering, people spend money where they see value. It’s your job to show them the value of what you are selling.

Catherine Morrison said, “Our ability to rebound and be made stronger as an economy will be directly correlated with our ability to manage our thinking. There’s an old Buddhist saying that applies so perfectly to business and our economy right now. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Coronavirus is here. Closure of many businesses is here. As cautious and necessary steps in preventing wildfire spread.

There is pain there for sure, and it turns out we can’t control all of that. But then there is suffering we layer on top by not effectively managing our brains. Our brains are hardwired to scan for and avoid danger, and this pandemic has triggered all of our lower brain’s fight or flight responses.

There are the obvious ones, panic in the stock market, the crazy and senseless hoarding of toilet paper. The cortisol spikes in our body. We lose access to all of our higher levels of problem solving and then people begin making decisions and taking action from that place.

We have an entire population of humans reacting from impulses in the lower brain and not managing their stress responses, so we have panic. Most of the economic things we see happening are a result of thought errors. Our ability to keep our economy strong is dependent on all of us continuing to market and sell, to reduce the suffering and thought errors in our thinking and to be an example of what is possible to those in fight or flight right now.”

Are you kidding me? That is everything. We could pick every single one of those statements apart. I really encourage you to go back and listen to all of these just over and over, as much as you need. Remember, suffering is optional. The world is experiencing a lot of suffering and thought errors, and it is our job to help mitigate that. Just like we can mitigate the spread of the virus by staying at home, we can mitigate the spread of fear by managing our brains and teaching others to do the same.

Thank you, Catherine, for that, it’s so powerful. Okay, my client Samantha Siffring said, “What I’ve noticed is that this new circumstance has brought up all the old thoughts that we had that we thought we were over already. Our brains are like, okay, they weren’t true before but maybe they are now. Should I think them now? Something that came up in my coaching this week was the thought, ‘Wait a minute, the model didn’t die. It’s still there.’”

She also goes on to say, “I have this concept I call opportunity glasses. We see opportunity when we’re open to it. I am seeing it everywhere right now. Restaurants that are just closing down in panic versus ones who are innovating with to-go meals, freezer meals, delivery to meet the new needs of the market.

Whether you see opportunity or the beginning of the end 100% depends on your thinking. I’m also over here just questioning the idea of a “crisis.” I’ve been running through the facts non-stop with myself and my clients. Is there a crisis? What is a crisis? How do we know? What do we know for sure is true?

I even had a client be like, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t even know anyone with the virus.’ Just shaking loose some of the intensity of it, to see the facts of the moment. Crisis is such a charged word for some people. What does it even mean?”

This is so good. I really believe this is a big thing that we have an opportunity to pay attention to and to change the conversation around is there are the facts that there is a virus, there is a pandemic, it is spreading quickly, but there are so many news people, by the dramatization that they’re using with the words, the way they describe things, the emphasis they put on things, we can create panic or we can create calm with the words we use and the way we describe things.

It doesn’t mean that we ignore it, it doesn’t mean we diminish it, but it does mean we mitigate the way that we think about it and the fear that we create with it.

Okay, so I loved this one from my client Jamie Lee. This is so good y’all, listen to this one. She says, “I’m reminded of how I once joined a hedge fund two weeks before the financial crisis of 2008. Everyone said there was a crisis and the bottom is going to fall out. It was my job to read newspapers for the fund, so I read every article claiming gloom and doom.

Because I didn’t have thought work, I believed everything I read. I was scared shitless. But now I look back on that and I notice I was okay. The ground never fell out from underneath me. I kept a well-paying job for two full years through the entire crash and upheaval of the financial crisis.

Even though the news was grim, even though my brain was scared, even though I believed” – what she calls, “my itty-bitty shitty committee, in my brain, telling me I’m no good. Today the news is also grim. My brain is also scared. But the difference is that I know I don’t have to believe my own itty-bitty shitty committee.

I notice the chaos of my mind. I know it’s not true. I notice the ground underneath me supporting me. I am okay. My clients are okay. We are okay. Selling is okay.”

Can you guys just take a second to really feel that? When I read that, it resonated deep in my bones and I feel like that is what I’ve been spending so much time with my own self-coaching is just feeling the ground underneath me. So I’m going to read that back again.

She said, “I notice the ground underneath me supporting me. I am okay. My clients are okay. We are okay. Selling is okay.” So good. Thank you so much Jamie for contributing that to the world.

My client Lindsay Dotzlaf said, “The biggest thing I have noticed this week is that nothing has changed. All of my clients have the exact same drama that they have always had. Now it just has on a fancy coat and feels more true. And they’re for sure certain I will now believe them. So when I think about selling, this also means nothing has changed.”

She also goes on to say, “It is also a huge opportunity to see how important people think coaching is. Since I work with coaches, if they don’t think coaching is the most important thing to spend money on, then this crisis will absolutely affect their business because they believe every consult when they say they don’t have the money right now. For me, I am certain coaching would be the almost last to go expense. I don’t care what the circumstances are. Coaching is vital. That belief is serving me very well right now.”

This is something to think about right now. Do you believe that coaching is the most important thing you can spend your money on? That will be reflected in your sales, especially during this time. This time will just exacerbate whatever is currently there. So think about that. And if you’re like, no, I really don’t believe that, question why.

Are you getting the most out of your coaching that you could be getting? Because I also agree, there’s no more important thing that I could ever spend money on and I did have that experience where I paid my car payment late multiple times in a row. I sold furniture, I sold clothes, I cashed in my IRA.

I did everything I could to keep myself coaching in the worst, most excruciating time of my life, in my hardest economic circumstances was when I buckled down and doubled down on my coaching because I genuinely believed it was the most important thing I could spend my money on. And that is why I am so effective at selling coaching and what I teach my clients and how to think and how for them to be that effective in coaching. It goes back to believing it’s the most important thing you can spend your money on. End rant.

Okay, my client Jenny Blake said, “People who think times are ‘uncertain,’ just acknowledge how the economy works. The economy is circular. It’s only hurting some businesses because they’re forced not to sell, or they’re forced to close, therefore causing less spending. The rest of us need to make up for them. We need to sell more, therefore increasing spending.

The photographer I hire then spends money on a marketing coach. The marketing coach then spends money on a business coach. The grass cutter you hire goes and spends money at the 7-11. The 7-11 employs staff. They also pay their staff health insurance. The more people they’re paying health insurance, the more health insurance workers are needed at the insurance corporation that your husband works at, or gets laid off at.

The less everyone sells and spends, the slower the economy moves, including the money going into each person’s pocket. The more people sell and spend, the more money goes into everyone’s pocket. If people truly trusted this, no one would stop selling or buying.”

I think this is so fascinating to think about. What causes you to stop selling and buying from a place that is anything but sufficiency? That’s the place you want to go to to make all of your decisions.

My client Sloane Sail said this, “You know how people don’t want to buy coaching because they’re afraid of not getting results? They’re making decisions in fear of the worst-case scenario, except the irony always is that they’re already living that worst-case scenario. Well, it’s the same thing here. People think they have to react to a crisis because it’s making their life insecure, but the irony is they were never secure in the first place.”

Y’all, that’s next level. I actually work with my coach every week and we just coached on this. We were coaching on my wedding and she said, “Oh, you were just mistaken. You thought contracts and dates meant that something was for sure happening, but you were just wrong the whole time. You just thought that having a wedding date and sending out invitations and paying money and signing agreements meant that that was definitely happening. You were wrong and you just didn’t know it.”

I was like, wait a minute. And we’ve never been tested at this level of wrongness in our belief, in our security. And it’s not a problem. You don’t have to freak out and be like, “Wait a minute, I’m insecure, oh my god, the ground is falling out from underneath me.” I think if we learn that we were never secure in the places that we thought we were, we also get to learn that were never insecure in the places that we thought we were.

We were always the same amount of secure as insecure because life is 50/50. Some of y’all are afraid of dying from the coronavirus pandemic but like, people are dying every day now from cancer, heart disease, car accidents. There are so many people dying today. More people are dying today from other reasons than the coronavirus.

Not to diminish that, but just to say like, we have a false sense of security. When we think that our spouses aren’t going to cheat on us, that’s just a false sense of security. We have no idea. We can’t control other people. When we think we’re not going to lose our job, like absolutely, you could lose your job tomorrow for some other reason.

When you think that you’re making a ton of money, like I had a time in my career, I was making – it was my first full six-figure year. I lost four clients paying me $1000 a month to coach them at once. So I lost $4000 a month in one week. All at once. And I didn’t recoup that money for four more months.

And I was spending – at that time I was investing a lot so I was spending about 10K a month in my investments, so I was making under. I ended up going into debt for four months. And what’s so fascinating is I just was relying and feeling very secure that all of those clients were going to keep going and I find so many of my clients do that.

Once they sign a client, they just decide that they’re secure and that client will always pay them and never quit, and that’s never true. Clients quit all the time. So you don’t need to have drama about that and create fear, but just know that if you’re going to give yourself a false sense of security, give it to yourself always, or make peace with insecurity, knowing that that is also always happening as well. That’s always true. We’re not entitled to security or insecurity. They’re both available to us always.

Okay, this one was really good. Are you guys ready? It was one of my favorites. Like, really, really resonated with me and made me go, “Damn, that’s a good way to think about it.” Because it’s so true. This is my client Maggie Reyes.

She says, “My thoughts about selling in a crisis are kind of like that song It’s Five O’ Clock Somewhere. There is always a crisis somewhere. The difference between this crisis and others is simply that we’re all experiencing it at the same time. Cancer is a crisis, infidelity is a crisis, losing clients for a small business is a crisis. A wide variety of health challenges are a crisis.

Not having sex in five months is a crisis if you want to be having sex. Arguing every day in a marriage can be a crisis. Having siblings in jail could be a crisis. Not trusting yourself can be a crisis if it interferes with every relationship you have. My clients have all kinds of crisis situations that they deal with so I can look back at my client roster and say all of them signed up to work with me in the middle of a crisis.

Are we ever not selling in a crisis? It’s an interesting question to ponder. Two of my clients who are nurses are the least concerned with what’s happening. Why? Because for them, this is not an exception. This is how they live every day. One of them said, ‘Sure, this is contagious. So is tuberculosis. You take precautions and you keep going.’

In my niche for marriage, women who are struggling with their relationships right now will only have the relationships magnified by more opportunities for conflict if they’re spending more time at home with their husbands. There is always no better time to get help than right now.”

So good. That’s a question I want you to think about. We’re going to do this series of selling in crisis, but the whole philosophy of this series is business as usual. We are always selling in a crisis. People always feel like they are in a crisis. That is how our problems feel to us.

And for a lot of people, it takes the ground falling out from underneath them. It takes a crisis for them to take it serious enough to take action and hire a coach. That was true for me. I remember getting robbed at gunpoint in Puerto Rico and being like, what just happened in my life? And hiring a coach.

Like there was a 48-hour period. This is really another story for another day, but a 48-hour period where my life was one thing and then it started crumbling based on decisions I was making that made no sense and were not on my radar and I couldn’t believe I was making them. And I remember thinking, in 48 hours, these are all the things that happened, all the results I created from my actions, and it scared the shit out of me because I didn’t know where they came from.

I’m like, I thought my life was one thing and now it’s this other thing. I didn’t understand how I got there. That’s what happens. When marriages fall apart, people are like, “I don’t understand how I got here.” That thought, “I don’t understand how I got here and this is a massive crisis and my life is falling apart,” sometimes those are the biggest motivators to get people to take action and to get the help they need.

It’s like when you’re smoking and then you get a cancer diagnosis. They can quit smoking right then and there. This is our time. Our clients have always been in crisis. They’ve also never been in crisis. Remember, it’s like, you’re insecure and you’re completely secure.

They’ve always been in crisis and they were never in crisis, but this will be the time they take you up on it because it’s the time that it will feel the most real, the most relevant, and the most exacerbated, whatever was already happening.

Alright, I have a last one for you here and it’s really good. You ready? This was also one of my favorites. So simple, it’s very short. My client Kim Guillory said, “Coaching is more valuable than my actual money right now because we have no idea if cash could even be used if everything is closed. But mind management is available to me always.”

That is everything. Yeah, I agree with that. To me, I think coaching is more valuable than all the cash in my account because it’s always created so much more cash for me to invest in myself and my brain. It’s also always created so much more happiness for me and peace for me. Everything that I would want from the things I would spend money on can always be given to me through coaching and the power of learning how to use my brain.

To me, that is the most valuable thing I could ever spend my money on. It is the last investment that would ever go. It is the thing I would double down on in the hardest of times and because of that, it makes me a magnet for clients. She also goes on to say, which is really good, “I invested in coaching yesterday and I bought a new washer today. Life is still happening.”

I love that thought. Try it on this week. Life is still happening. How can you contribute to the happening? I hope you enjoyed their wisdom as much as I did. It really genuinely made me so proud to be a life coach, so proud of be these coaches’ coach, and to just be a part of a coaching community that thinks so powerfully about selling, about money, about serving, about security and insecurity. I love it all. I hope you do too.

Alright, I’m going to be coming at you the rest of this week with more podcasts to keep you serving and to keep you making money regardless of the circumstance. See you on the next one.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program, where you’re going to make your first $2000, the hardest part, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.